


The Incredulity of Saint Thomas

by More_night



Series: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bleeding Hearts, Multi, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, back story for the lightest way, characters tag: why isnt there a all of them tag, heart of hearts of all basically, it only does so inside of you, season 4, until someone opens you up, your heart bleeds all the time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 44
Words: 124,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6927280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every transformation involves a letting-go and a coming-to. This is the story of Will Graham’s letting-go.</p><p>NB: Is not at all abandoned. But will not - I'm now fairly certain - be updated before this semester (Fall 2016) is over. Love to all those reading, this or other stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> Time-bending thanks to [b_minako](http://archiveofourown.org/users/b_minako/pseuds/b_minako) and [rav3nsta9](http://archiveofourown.org/users/effie_chan/pseuds/rav3nsta9) for reading the first few chapters of this, pointing out incredibly important things and being super-kittens of wonder in general.
> 
> On [tumblr](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/).

 

Walking away from Robertas Lecter’s cottage, Jack was as empty-handed as he had come. As he lifted his eyes to the stretching New Jersey fields, goldening grass in between patches of snow as far as the eye could see, he felt another kind of void too. In his mind, the faces of Clarice Starling and Bella wouldn’t disentangle, as if they had grown together in a vine of thoughts and places. He swallowed around the lump in his throat.

He turned right on the path that led back to the main road, where his car was parked. About fifty feet in the distance, two of Lecter’s Japanese guards smoked cigarettes behind a row of short young oaks, dark suits behind dead leaves.

A soft noise caught Jack’s attention. A door closing silently, then airy steps on the gravel. He turned around, and suddenly, he was facing Will Graham. He had slightly longer, disarrayed hair. Fading stitches on his right cheek, that took him to tilt his face faintly on the side to avoid stretching the skin. Jack remembered the images of Dolarhyde’s tape. The only thing in the frame were Dolarhyde’s legs and Will’s blood, sliding along the pants’ leather in bright, splashing gulps. Will’s eyes were exactly as he remembered them, as was the sad smile he gave him.

The birds chirped around them.

“A strange look on your face, Agent Crawford,” Will said, finally.

Jack looked around at their bucolic surroundings, once more. He felt watched. But he shook his head with a thin smile. “I’m suspended.”

Will crossed his arms over the wool shirt he was wearing, breathed out a puff of mist in the cold air. “The guilt you’re feeling,” he said. “It's ugly now, but it will fade out.”

“You played me, Will.”

“I was trying to reverse the movement I was wedged in.”

Jack nodded. “And you accelerated it.”

“I suppose that, in doing that, I made it mine.”

The large house’s opale walls shone in the daylight. Jack searched the nearby windows for the shape of someone peeking through the blinds. “Is he alive?” he asked. Will nodded slowly. “Is he here?”

Will scoffed. One side of his mouth twisted as he held back some words. “We’ll be leaving soon,” he said.

“We,” Jack repeated.

“How did you think it would play out, Jack? Killing Dolarhyde. Then killing Hannibal,” Will said. “Killing me?”

Something twitched inside Jack. The memory of Bella fell in the depths of him. He remembered his phone in his pocket, just barely in his reach. “You spoke with Dolarhyde. What did you tell him?”

“It wasn't dissimilar to what I told you.”

Sliding his hand deeper in the pocket of his coat, Jack slowly wrapped his fingers around his phone. “He believed you.”

“I’ve never lied to you, Jack. I failed, in some ways, but I didn’t lie.”

He had clicked the button at the top, but he needed to curl his fingers back to unlock the screen and the coat’s cashmere was stiff. “Do you think this ends in a good way, for anyone?”

“You didn’t see your own fall in this,” Will said, gaze drawn to the exclosure around them. “You thought that you would stay perched above and watch.”

Jack took his chance as Will was staring above his shoulder and opened the phone, entering his PIN blindly. “I should have killed him,” he said.

“I suppose that in some other world you did.” Will's face darkened somewhat. “In the same elsewheres where Abigail didn’t die.”

“And some where I was running after _you_ in Italy.” Jack’s thumb trailed down the screen for the phone icon.

“Are you sure that’s not what you were doing?” Pacing in the gravel, Will paused. His eyes were still attached to the horizon. “Don’t lose your time, Jack. There’s no reception here.” Jack stilled.

Taking both hands out of his pockets, he showed them to Will, open and empty. He noticed how close to his side Will held his right arm, like he couldn’t move it at all. He wondered what would happen if he took him down now. The guards would react, but they probably wouldn’t kill him. Even once he had Will pinned to the ground, what would he do then? “You blame me.”

Will pressed his lips together and turned away. “I blamed you when Molly was shot.”

“Hannibal sent Dolarhyde after your family,” Jack pointed out. 

“You brought me to Hannibal.”

Jack frowned. “What else are you blaming me for?”

Staring away again, Will shook his head. “Nature can’t be blamed, nor effectively punished. Would you blame a pancreas or a liver?”

“Organs are cells, Will. You’re more than cells.” Near them, in a bush of amaryllis, flower-less and twisted, sat a tiny bird. Will’s eyes didn’t leave it and Jack knew that there would never again be a way to tell if Will stood on his side or not. But then, he had no side, just a goal.

“But what kind of more?”

Somewhere up on the wall of the house on Jack’s left, something caught Will’s attention. He stared at it quickly, then brought his eyes back down. When Jack turned around and looked over his shoulder at the spot where Will’s gaze had stopped, he saw nothing but a window obscured by a white drape. “How do you rationalize this?” he asked Will.

“Giving rationale has never been my strong suit. I can give you emotions and moments, some thread to weave through the hoops you don’t see, but nothing more.”

“You crashed Hell’s doors down on your head. Trapping the devil inside with you,” Jack said. “Is that it?”

“It sounds like a plan when you say it like that.”

Somewhere, from behind them, around the house, the main door opened and closed. Voices followed, searching for them, steps closing in. “You won’t confine Hannibal Lecter,” Jack said.

Will massaged his right upper arm, maneuvering the limb to extend. It couldn't go very far, Jack saw. The elbow barely made it past a 90 degrees angle. Jack wondered if he would live long enough to give that information to anyone, or if he would die here with the blue sky and peaceful trees indifferent. But then, who would he tell it to? “I can’t let him just go, Jack.”

Jack arched his eyebrows. Steps were coming toward them now, there was some curt talking. He didn’t have much time. “Is it working?”

On Will’s face, pain, regret and hope surfaced together, twined, and then sank back in the bottomless ground behind his eyes. “No one died since the vet in Fallow,” Will said.

 

* * *

 

_Six weeks earlier_

 

* * *

  _  
_

A hematoma formed on his uninjured side as they entered the water, when his arm was crushed along the ribcage. But he would know that only later. For a time, he thought he was dead, then he became dead. Only it hurt too much. Pain and ocean fused together. His body was blank, white, carved into the roars of currents and billows. It was not the sea whose arms bound him. It was Will’s. He held on until all noises grew to a loud shriek that entered his mouth, his nose, his lungs, and after it was only water.

 

* * *

 

When he opened his eyes, Will saw a bird. Very small, black, round, with feathering that gave off a subdued glow.

The water stung. His eyes, his nose, his throat. It was in his hair, over his head. More wound than skin, he managed to pull his head up from the wet sand. Turning on his side, he coughed up so much water that he wondered if the sea was inside or outside him. His body had lost its strenght and shape.

He knelt in the rocks and sand. The bird had hopped farther, keeping away from the crashing waves. It was probably smaller than the palm of his hand, but it looked like a raven. Its beak cracked open and blood flowed out. The wind ruffled its feathers, then the water caught it, finally, and it disappeared.

Will’s clothing was caked with blood and sand. He was blind in the night, where all was grayer and darker. He made out the sky and the stars and everything else must be land and life.

Hannibal’s body was not far. On its side, with the right arm twisted. Will pushed him on his back. His face was gray. Will’s hands did not leave him. He placed his ear on Hannibal’s chest and heard nothing but the rumbling of the sea all around. And he had thought death would be the end of something. Now he  _stood on the beach and watched as Hannibal was dragged back into the ocean, feet first and digested by the jaws that rolled and rolled. Then, far away, at a distant point on the left, but clear like a star in the night, Hannibal was sucked out of the sea and flew back up the cliff, Will’s arms clinging to him until the shape of them both disappeared above the bluff._

The cold was nails into his hands and feet. He leaned over Hannibal and, fingers laced, compressed his chest. Once, twice, and again. His chest burned, his palms felt like steel, impersonal. Until Hannibal writhed and coughed. Will pushed him on his side and the water got out of him, like  _a fowl coming out of his throat_.

 

* * *

 

Clarice Starling put her letter of resignation down beside her coffee cup. The white paper looked gray against the faint gloss of the wood. She took a bite in her toast and started folding the letter in three even parts, to slip in the envelope beside her plate.

She had let the news on on her computer screen, but cut the sound. There was little footage available. They were showing the site where Dolarhyde had ambushed the convoy. A reporter had said earlier that comments from the BSHCI on what had motivated the transfer could not be obtained. Somewhere on the road, near the two crashed police cars on the screen, she could make out Jack Crawford’s silhouette, his dark coat, the blood and broken glass shining on the pavement.

The door to Ardell’s room closed. He walked into the kitchen, his dark blue pajama pants pooling around his naked feet. “Anything new? ” she asked him.

“So much bullshit going on right now.” He poured himself a glass of orange juice, grabbed a box of Christie's with rainbow chips and stacked the last three of them on a plate. “I’ve frozen every thread. Tattlecrime went down from too much traffic. Almost did that too around 2,” he recounted, reaching on the top shelf for their last cup.

“Did you sleep?” On her computer, the footage shifted to a picture of Dolarhyde’s house, when firemen were still around, poking with axes in the burnt wood. The water had frozen at their feet in a gray sludge of ash and ice.

“No. Too much to read and watch.” Waiting while his coffee was heating in the microwave, Ardell leaned against the counter, crossed his arms over his faded black t-shirt, the one with the unicorn chimera turning into a lion at the legs. “Around 4 AM, they started saying Graham helped him escape. Then they just stopped saying it.”

She frowned, finished her toast. “That doesn’t feel right.” She had forgotten to add peanut butter to the list of things to get from the store.

Ardell shrugged. “Feels like something went wrong.”

She got up. A ray of sunlight blinded her, darting straight through the branches of the tree outside the window. She passed by it and it went down her shoulder, then on the ground. “What’s with the convoy?” she asked, taking the pen out of its clip and noting down ‘peanut butter’ on the small white board.

“They think Lecter got free by himself. But a local police officer snapped a shot of the report. Tweeted it. Guards were shot in the head. Lecter has only shot once and solely as part of a copycat pattern,” Ardell chronicled.

Clarice was beginning to feel warmer, or cooler. At least her clothes did not feel like an armor anymore, only like clothes. She was glad for Ardell’s company. Now, she could think of something else. She could even stop thinking altogether and let her decision settle inside of her, like a boat sinking down in the storm, finally finding peace while wind raged above. “Well, Dolarhyde’s got to be dead.”

“Yeah, there’s supposed to be a press conference at ten.” Ardell massaged his neck. Clarice thought he should shower. She hated sleepless nights, they left her body sticky and cracking, or maybe she was just too old for that. “You haven’t changed your mind?” he asked her, tone lower, eyes still closed.

“No,” she said. “Are you still angry you weren’t accepted in the training program?”

“I wasn’t angry, I was… annoyed. And not at you.”

In her chest, she could feel her heart pause before it started beating louder, not faster, but more grave. “Prurnell moved my appointment from this afternoon to nine thirty.”

“Funky.”

“I know.” For a moment, the only sound was Ardell slowly chewing on his cookies. As neatly as possible, he had broken each of them in two and piled them on one side of his plate. With a precise snap, he took a bite that was a little more than the third of one half. Then the rest, then a sip of coffee, and the next half. Gradually, Clarice’s heart calmed down. Its beating was still insistent, and fragile, as if in wait.

“They think things will get clearer now,” Ardell said, nodding to the computer. “I’d rather say we’re in for a big bout of darkness. The police will seal up tight. Site’ll get a warrant or two.” He rolled his eyes. “We won’t get decent info for months.”

“In that metaphor, you’re the light-bringer?”

“I like to ordain the night in beautiful shapes,” Ardell said. She knew he meant it, even if he was joking. He clicked the volume back on on the computer. They both listened to a retelling of the verdict announcement in the Lecter trial, weeks before. “You shouldn’t quit. You’ll miss it,” Ardell said.

“I’m fine with research.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m better at research,” she tried again.

He nodded. “More believable. But keep working on it. Especially if you want to convince yourself.”

Clarice closed her eyes. She did not think she was trying to convince herself. She was better at research, even if she had had good results in field training. Yet, she felt something in it slipped through her fingers, like she could not exactly hold on to it. She stepped away. “We’ll need to wait until the media ruckus dies,” she said. The sunray was on her shoulder now and warmed the skin of her lilac blouse there.

She leaned over the oven and glanced at her reflection in the shiny surface, adjusted her earrings. It had been weeks since she had worn any. She had put them on this morning and the piercings had almost closed up. Behind her, the journalist was reading a report. Probably one they had already heard. “The location and condition of FBI consultant Will Graham, criminal inmate Hannibal Lecter and suspected serial killer Francis Dolarhyde are currently unknown. However, FBI officials have just released information that all three of them should be considered dangerous.”


	2. 2.

 

* * *

 

  _Siccativation (n.)_ : The process during which unsaturated fat contained in binders such as oil oxydates. Siccatives are used to increase or decrease the speed at which paint dries.

 

* * *

_On Will’s next visit, Peter Bernadone had been given new clothing. An orderly left when Will sat down. For a long time, Peter stared out the window, statuelike except for the ticks. There was nothing much to see there save for a square of cloudy sky. Will wondered if Peter's apathy was a reaction to treatment, or just to being held here. “Did you keep the bird?” Peter stammered, in the end._

_“No,” Will said. “Animal services took it.”_

_“Well.” Peter's head twitched. “They won’t find him no home. There’s never home for birds. No home that’s like yours and mine. They like the forest and the wild.”_

_Will spread his hand on the table, tried to catch Peter’s gaze and couldn't. “I could take him in,” he offered. “Would that be okay?” He pictured the cage hanging in his kitchen. A large one, with many roosts, clear and open and almost like freedom._

_“It would. It would.” Peter shook his head. “But no need. Really, just let him go.”_

_“Let him go where?”_

_For a moment, Peter smiled. Beside them, an older lady in handcuffs snored quietly in front of the television. “Release him,” Peter said. “He’s been reborn already. He’s fine.”_

_“He’ll die if they let him go. He’s lived his life in a cage.”_

_The other man struggled for words. Emotion triggered more complicated responses in those coping with cerebral injury. A blur of blue on a scan, the impact on tissue, the swelling, the shunts, the inanimate grey of dead brain. “Animals are okay with the wild. It’s fine if they die.”_

_“It’s never okay when something dies,” Will said. “Something’s lost. It wasn’t alone.”_

_Peter Bernadone’s mouse’s nose was peeking from under his plain flannel shirt. Gently, he hushed it back inside. “It’s fine, really. Outside, death means something. If it dies in our hands we kill it. But nature, it doesn’t kill.”_

_Will stilled, watched the shirt sleeve shake with the mouse’s nosing. “Yes, it does. All the time.”_

_“No. Nothing kills anything else out there. They just come and go. Like breathing in, breathing out. Every time you breathe, the air doesn’t die. It comes and goes.”_

 

* * *

 

The earth tones in Kade Prurnell’s office told Clarice Starling home, then safety, then run, as far away as you can whenever something wants to make you feel safe. But it was always tempting to run from the void. The fear was just the skipped heartbeat before the adrenaline rushed in and she could fly, because she knew someday she would. Or it was because she was about to let it all go.

Prurnell did not get up to greet her. “You’ll be passing your exam to become a full agent this year?”

Clarice sat down silently. It was best to get it done now. “No, Ma’am,” she answered.

The other woman pulled her eyes up from the file she was reading. They were red and tired, the ones of someone who barely slept enough regularly and had skipped last night’s few precious hours. Her face was drawn with work, an exhaustion nearing violence. No frown, placid, a wall of bone and skin. “Why not? You have an impressive record,” she asked.

The news played in the background on a television screen behind Clarice, the sound very low, like the buzzing of an insect. Clarice had noticed the TV when she had entered. It was showing Jack Crawford, when he had refused to answer questions near the crash site. “I don’t know if it’s impressive, but it’s not the best there is,” she said.

“Answer the question.”

Like jumping down, hoping she would fly. When it would reach her brain that she would not fly, she would be used to the thought of landing and the overwhelming terror. “I wanted to quit.”

The older woman crossed her hands on her desk, smiling, as if she understood. “Wanted,” she said. Clarice nodded. Her throat felt like it had swollen, as if it meant to swallow her whole head now. Prurnell played with the pen she held and closed Clarice’s file. “You wrote a paper about the capture of Hannibal Lecter by Will Graham,” she said.

“I suggested a redefinition of the loss of identity that presents in some cases of Stockholm syndrome. With it as an example, yes.”

“Did you ever meet Graham?”

She remembered her question to Professor Graham, but it had not really been talking, much less knowing. With it came her impression of the man, someone blurred, something like hesitation, but more like a deeply-cleaved ambiguity, buried so far underneath what showed was something else entirely, mirrors and images, along with the usual traits common to academia and law enforcement both - arrogance, distance, strength. “No,” she said.

Prurnell checked her phone briefly. “You heard about Lecter’s escape from prison yesterday?”

“Watched the news all night.”

“What do you think about it?” Prurnell asked, after flashing a short, not conniving, but accepting smile.

“I don’t know there was something to think of it.”

“Then consider yourself hereby encouraged to share your thoughts.”

Some of the tension in her shoulders disappeared. She remembered the hours spent at night preparing her paper, with the files opened around her on her bedspread, pictures, written reports. She'd liked that. “I think Graham’s talent is misunderstood, especially by Jack Crawford. I supposed this could have caused the operation to…” She paused. “Backfire.”

“You don’t think Hannibal Lecter is to be blamed?”

“Hannibal Lecter is a criminal. This acknowledgment is a blame in itself, dispensed by society. But, here, in this office and in the context of this discussion, the role of the Bureau as an institution is more important. If Lecter highjacked the operation, it may be because he was allowed to.”

“Allowed by whom?”

“I suppose that’s a rightful question.”

“Which you are however not in a position to ask. Yet.” Prurnell leaned back in her seat and tilted her head. “I have a certain amount of knowledge that brings me to a certain amount of suspicions,” she began. “I want you to lead an internal investigation.”

“On what?”

“The Lecter case. With a special focus on Jack Crawford's role in it.”

Clarice could not help but pale as she looked at the other woman. How many times would she have to say it? “I intended to quit,” she said again.

“You’ve proven you can pull your load. I hope that, if give access to more responsibility, you could reconsider,” Prurnell said. “Besides, you will still be registered at the Academy until you cancel your participation to the final exams. Which you cannot do before registrations open. That’s in a month.”

Behind Clarice, the news were almost muted but not entirely. It whispered above her shoulder, directly into her ear. “The Lecter case…” she said. “Starting when?”

“Since it’s been a case,” Prurnell said. “I know for a fact that Will Graham didn’t tell us everything he knew, no matter the circumstances, at numerous moments in time. I want to know how much Crawford knew, how much Dr Alana Bloom knew.”

Starling brought her hands to her lap, started to smile, then frowned. “I’ll be bypassing every superior I currently don’t even have.”

“You will have all the authorizations you need.”

In the distance, her tiny apartment kitchen became smaller and tinier, until it was gone. Was that her quiet life? Or was it just her wishes and her dreams? She swallowed thickly. “I answer to you?”

“Yes.”

“Only you?”

“Can you do that?”

“Why couldn’t I?”

“How’s your relationship with Jack Crawford? He's provided documentation for your paper. Given you excellent grades before that.”

She stilled almost completely. She hoped it would show as a mix of fear, reaction to authority, perhaps a hint of displeasure. Her heart was beating like a drumline. She reminded herself that it did not show. You’re fine, girl. “Fine.”

During the short silence that followed, the press conference started on the television. Hushed noises quieted down. Prurnell’s eyes darted to the screen over Clarice’s shoulder. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. During a joint operation involving the FBI and the Baltimore Police Department, Francis Dolarhyde, suspect in the Tooth Fairy murders, died at a time estimated to be 10 PM, Eastern time, yesterday, October 29. Hannibal Lecter, held until yesterday in the BSHCI facility, and whose escape it is currently assumed Dolarhyde facilitated, as well as Will Graham, consultant on the case for the FBI, are both, at the time, missing and, given evidence found on the scene, presumed dead.”

 

* * *

 

When Walter was a baby, he used to tuck his blanket around himself, rolling in it in his sleep. Molly would wake up every night to make sure he didn't suffocate. Infants could do that, quickly return to where they were born from, like if it was a smaller step to take for them. But afterwards they grew older and they seemed to be better at living, and you thought they would stay that way forever.

Walter had woken up. He stared at her, with eyes worse than sad, like a dark room.

She knew her face looked puffy and tired. But somewhere inside, there was something that felt new, like she was free to be in pain again, like it was just coming back home. “Come here, Wally,” she said.

“The doctor said you should sleep.”

“You should sleep too.” She propped herself up on the pillows and patted the bed beside her. “There’s plenty of room for two.”

“On TV, they said that the man who shot you was dead,” Walter said, not moving from the couch.

“I know. He won’t harm us anymore.”

“Or the dogs?”

“Or the dogs.” Molly knew her son was not worried. This was not exactly fear either. “What is it?”

Outside the room’s glass walls, there was the nurse station, with bright flowers in a tall vase, tulips and roses. It was what Walter gazed at when he spoke. “I told dad he should kill him,” he said. “Was it a bad thought?”

She smiled, but she knew it looked like she was crying too. Her eyes hurt and itched. “Sometimes it’s okay to have bad thoughts,” she said.

Walter still stared right ahead, stiff, his sock-clad feet slipping free of the thin blanket as he sat up. “Maybe dad did kill him.”

“Baby,” she said. “We don’t know that for sure.” Molly had refused to turn on the television again. It hung above the bathroom door in the corner of the room and shone like a black hole.

“But we know dad’s dead,” her son went on, frowning slightly, unperturbed, conversational.

If the tears had cut through her face, she would not have felt them more acutely. She brought her hands up to wipe them and it pulled on her IV. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we know that.”

“I have another bad thought.”

“You can tell me.”

He took his eyes up from the ground. “Even if it hurts?”

“Especially if it hurts,” she said. “Hurting is… just what our mind does. We feel like it’s doing it to us, but it’s not. Like dogs barking. They can’t help it, we can’t either.” She held out her hand and Walter got up from the couch and made his way to her. To her, he didn't seem older. Parents never saw their children age. “But we can share it, when we hurt, and it hurts less.”

Walter gripped the edge of her bed. “I don’t want you to get married again. I don’t want another dad. Ever.”

It was how the sadness really ceased, to be replaced with something that was both more insubstantial and suddenly the most important thing in the room, in the hospital and in the world. Molly reached for Walter and did not stop until she held him tight enough. “I love you, baby. You know, that, right?”

“Yeah,” Walter said in her shoulder, his cheek on the white gauze of the bandage.

 

* * *

 

_Hands still wet with the blood jerking from Mrs Hobbs’ neck, Will tried the locked handle, leaned again heavily against the thick wood, then hit it until it gave in with a loud crack. Whether it was the bones in his shoulder or the door, or the cage inside his chest, he could not tell._

_The inside of the house was dark and he felt he stepped into a forest, but everything was going so fast, he did not care that he was leaving the light of outside. He blinked many times until the black turned into gray, then into spots of white and he saw Hobbs disappearing in the kitchen and the two legs he dragged with him._

_But this time he stopped._

_Before moving in further, he looked back outside and, through the torn door, there was Mrs Hobbs, dead on the concrete, like an offering. He frowned. Behind him, Garret Jacob Hobbs had already slit Abigail's throat, but_ blood was sliding down Will’s arm, coming from a deep cut to his right shoulder and it seemed so much that he could taste it. And he could taste it, because there was just more blood in his mouth. Holding onto the doorway was Hannibal, leaning on the left, forehead against the wooden doorframe, his right arm hanging at his side, the fingers shaking slightly.

Behind him in the distance, their steps in the sand were mixed with blood. Occasionally, under the moonlight, larger patches of sand were muddled and darker where they had fallen down. The path led to the porch and the door of a house, somewhere on the beach.

Will wondered how much longer his nerves would hold him upright, alight with stimulus, the pain so intense it was like the air he breathed.

He looked around and didn't know where they had handed up. First, he saw shimmering surfaces in the dark. He narrowed his eyes and he made out large glass casings, holding knives, guns and fishing gear. The walls of the store were covered in fishing and hunting equipment, coats, pants, boots on one side, guns, ammunition, rods on the other side.

He slipped his left arm around Hannibal to help him inside. The other man was silent except for a rough breathing. They reached the backstore, behind the cash. Will leaned forward to let Hannibal slid down and sit against the wall. Hannibal gave one short wince when Will’s arm pulled away from him, brushing against the wound in his side. Then he leaned back against the wooden wall, blinking fast, breath shortening, hand clasped over the exit wound. His fingers were tight on the shirt that was now black with blood and seawater.

Right arm limp and dull at his side, Will made out his surroundings. The staff room was small, had no door but a curtain, held open. There was a table in a corner with a coffeemaker and boxes of cookies. A counter with a microwave. A refrigerator with lunchboxes inside. Will opened the cupboards and found an emergency kit, stacked among empty plastic containers and piles of magazines.

Inside, there was only an old roll of gauze, plasters, and at the bottom of it, a box of aspirin. He turned to look at Hannibal: he was looking back, panting, attentive, just like he had before Dolarhyde had stabbed Will in the face.

Will’s head was spinning. He poured aspirins in his hand and swallowed them dry. _“How many are you taking?” Hannibal had asked him, once, at a crime scene. Will had shaken his head, said he_ was fine. The right side of his face was empty, just as if it was not there at all. In its place, there was only a blaze. He got up and went back in the main room. From the hangers, Will grabbed clothing, some thick and heavy to warm them up, some lighter to bandage. Then he broke the glass casings and took a knife from it.

When he came back, Hannibal’s eyelids were fluttering, as he lulled into hypothermia. Will knelt at his side and raised the knife. The only light in the room came from the lone, red blip emitted by a smoke detector on the wall above their heads. The blade caught it.

“Kill them all?” Hannibal whispered, as the short blade rested near his neck. His hands were open, at his sides.

“Yes,” Will said. “All of us.” He placed the knife’s blade in the collar of Hannibal’s shirt and pulled down, cutting the garnment open.

The skin underneath was a mix of pale and red, and a strange, waxen white near the wound. Hannibal’s hand came to rest lightly on his, fingers curling around his where they held the knife, cold against his own cold skin. “I never thought I would receive such a glorious gift.”

“Death?” Will breathed.

Hannibal’s eyes did not leave Will. “Death with you.”

“Death from me.”

“Rebirth from you,” Hannibal murmured, grip loosening around Will’s hand.

Everytime Hannibal inhaled, shocks ran through his chest and the edges of the wound oozed blood. _Like something wanted to come out from it. In the distance, a bird cawed, low, then the noise merged with the weeze of their breathings._ “We could still die,” Will said. His voice was dreamy as he thought of how simultaneously flimsy and solid that prospect was.

“If you leave, I will,” Hannibal said. “The possibility is nested in you. Where the flesh stops being flesh. I could turn to nothing but tissue and skin. ”

Will placed the knife on the floor beside them. As he warmed up, the wound in his leg had reopened and ached the most brightly now. The blood from the deep cut in his chest had congealed into his clothing. He undid Hannibal’s grip on his hand and took it to one side of Hannibal’s cut sweater. Hannibal gripped it with weak fingers and held on, while Will pulled the other half of the shirt from him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarice's question to Will in class is in [Some Things Must Be Nurtured](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5036245).


	3. 3.

 

It had taken them only five hours to track the transponder in the police car stolen by Francis Dolarhyde. A first FBI team had been sent in to clear the area. Jack had been kept away: he knew it meant that he had fallen from grace. They had told him to coordinate the investigation on the crash site. He had been waiting in a blank and brown office, near Puffsville, where the crash had happened, learning of new developments as they trickled in. After securing the neighboring woods, the SWAT team had reached the house a little after 3 in the morning, discovering Dolarhyde’s body moments later. He had received a call from Prurnell, commanding, cold. No promises, no threats. Get there, Jack.

So he was getting there.

His tongue was thick with the old taste of cold coffee. It had rained all night. The woods were a graying green for the grass and a dark emerald for the large, squat pines. The road was sinuous. For the past five miles, it had ascended imperceptibly. The pale beach had become rocks, then cliffs and now the sea was a distant roar outside of the car.

Jack cradled his cell phone in his hand, testing its weight. Was his life heavier than this? Worthier? Eyes on the horizon where clouds rushed in the crystalline day, he called Alana Bloom. The phone rang and rang. Jack ignored what it was that he had meant to ask exactly. He knew why she had refused witness protection. He knew she had made the good decision too.

His call went to voicemail and he realized that he had wanted to ask if this was only all his fault.  

 

* * *

 

Among the busy swarm of officers, Jack was led to the house proper. First, the dining room. He recognized the center piece on the table from Hannibal’s Baltimore home - bones, death, feathers and jaws, and the absurd eggs - then looked around, taking in all the rest that also held a peculiar familiarity, like it wouldn't make sense anywhere else than here.

Price and Zeller had settled in the living room. Jack’s eyes went to the small evidence cards. 1, 2, 3, 4. Up to 15. All of them near blood splatters. One forensics technician was crouching near the wall, his eye lined up to a tiny hole in the middle of it. There was nothing that spoke of anything more than all the past crime scenes he had investigated.

Jack took off his gloves. Thought of how Bella’s hands would have looked, aged, between his. Thought of how Clarice’s hands had looked, young, between his. He nodded at Price, then Zeller. “Walk me through it,” he said, somber.

Price took off one of his latex gloves and frowned. “Is it true? Are we shut down?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jack said, shaking his head slowly. His gaze caught the camera. It did not seem broken, even if the tripod had fallen down. It came back in a rush to him: the other families were filmed. Trophies, proofs, records. The need to keep a trace. Any trace. “The film. You watched it?” he asked.

Zeller nodded. “It’s real short,” he said. “Filmed the place before he went down on them.” He gestured aimlessly with his hand. “And, I suppose, during the…”

“Murder,” Jack finished. “Hannibal or Will?”

“Both. From the looks of it.”

Price stepped forward, pointed at the window. “Bullet came through there.” His finger travelled, stopped near the piano. “Hit Hannibal.” Jack’s eyes went down to the large pool of dried blood caking the carpet, the scattered shards of green glass from the wine bottle, dark in the early morning. “In the torso or abdomen, most likely. Back or front, we’re not sure.”

“And it’s mostly over there,” Zeller went on, pointing at the opposite side of the room. “Smashed the wine bottle. Then fractured in two pieces. One in the floor, one in the wall,” he said, mimicking the trajectory as he spoke. Once he was done, he gestured toward the main pool of blood and began to draw equivocal circles. “Wine and blood mixed. Kind of trash romantic. It’s why the funny color, too. A real intense black.”

The blood had soaked into the carpet, its edges turning browner. Jack glared at both Agents until they calmed down. “Will’s unharmed at this point in things?” he asked, finally.

Price smiled cheerlessly. “Wait for it.”

Retracing Dolarhyde’s steps, Zeller jumped out the window down on the stone patio. “Dolarhyde comes through the window,” he explained, walking back inside. “Sets up the camera. They have a murderous chit-chat.”

“Awful nice seeing you. Big fan. Gonna kill you,” Price filled in.

“Then _bam_ -…” Zeller spun around. “Pulls out a knife, turns, stabs Will.”

“On camera?” Jack asked.

Price shook his head vividly. “No,” he said. “Will’s blood’s on the floor here.” He indicated a few disordered splashes near a knocked-over chair. “Then trickling there,” he went on. “Then through the window. And outside in the...” He searched for a word. “Blood fest.”

“Also the look on Hannibal’s face,” Zeller noted.

“And we can-…” Price dropped his hands, swallowed. “Hear Will, on the recording.”

Jack turned away, walked to the window. Forensics staff had secured a plastic sheet in its place, to protect the evidence inside from the rain of the night. It was held back open now, catching the growing sunlight in its opaque off-white. “Then what?”

Both men exchanged a look. “Then nothing. No evidence, film’s finished,” Price said.

“Well, all hell breaks lose. But the blood’s mostly washed away now. We’re gonna have people coming in from Seattle to take samples,” Zeller explained, pointing at the patio. “They’ll analyse the soil from the cracks between the stones…”

“It’s really coo-…”

“I’m sure,” Jack cut them short. He stepped out on the patio. The air smelled of a mix between the freshness of rain and the bitterness of blood. Two technicians were scratching flesh from the axe. They left when they saw Jack. The top of Dolarhyde’s body was covered by a black forensics bag. Jack leaned down and lifted it. The Dragon seemed peaceful. Eyes open and going for the sky, his face very pale and elevated somehow, soul faded. “Wounds?” Jack asked.

“Two fatal ones,” Zeller said. He pulled the sheet back to expose Dolarhyde’s abdomen. “Disembowled.” The cut still seemed fresh and gaping, the smell of viscera and excrements mingling with the one of plasm. “Jugular ripped out.”

“Ripped out?”

“More like bitten out.” Price frowned. “I’m guessing Hannibal. You know. Affinities.”

“We’ve looked at the blood coagulation. From the looks of it, both injuries were simultaneous.”

Jack frowned. “What about this?” he said, looking down at the blood patterns around Dolarhyde’s torso. From a distance, it looked like wings. Diffuse now because they had been cleaned by the pour, but most of it had stained the stone, leaving a blanched shadow.

“We don’t know,” Zeller said, spreading his hands.

“Our current hypothesis is a cosmic event,” Price said.

“Cosmic event?” Jack repeated, eyes on the dead mythical creature at his feet. “Not thinking this might have been done on purpose?”

“Like finger painting?” Zeller said. “I looked. Doesn’t seem like it. ”

Dolarhyde’s eyes were still aimed upwards, open like ponds for drops to fall into. To Jack, he was becoming grayer and grayer, melding with the stone underneath, protected by the spread wings. “And once Dolarhyde's down? What then?” he asked.

Zeller shrugged. Price turned slightly to look at the cliff over his shoulder. Wind blew into Jack’s hair.

“Blood ends there,” Price said, gesturing at a place near the cliff-drop, a few feet away. “They could have jumped, I guess…”

Zeller shook his head. “I still think one of them took the other down,” he insisted.

Price sighed. “We’re disagreeing,” he told Jack.

Jack nodded silently. Dolarhyde’s body was resting still, alone on the rock, the flying soldier in the dawn. Jack put his gloves back on. “Jack,” Zeller called out. “We started mapping the place for prints, hair, DNA. We found Hannibal’s, Will’s, Dolarhyde’s. That’s recent. But there’s much older ones.”

“From Abigail Hobbs,” Price said. “And Miriam Lass.”

 

* * *

 

Hannibal had held still stoically while Will wrapped the gauze around him, then sections from a pale shirt retrieved from a rack. His lips were sealed all the way through. He let out a single cry when Will tightened the cloth around him. After, kneeling and unsteady, eyes roaming, Hannibal had cut Will’s shirt off from him to wrap a make-shift bandage around his shoulder, tying his arm to his side. It reminded Will of something, for a split second. He had _a strange taste at the back of his throat, and the vague memory of Florence, the sky that slipped in and out of the window, sometimes it was in the room, it held angels and golden clouds. In the middle of it, when Hannibal had pressed a clean pad against the bullet hole in his shoulder, he had passed out._

 _When he woke up, Will_ was sitting on the floor, propped against the wall. Some of the aspirin had kicked in, so now he felt painstakingly sluggish, lines blurring outside and inside. It was not enough. And he was still bleeding. Hannibal was beside him, his blood-covered hand clasping the bright white of the bandage wrapped around him. Will’s skin did not hurt as much. But, he found out, it was the effect of heat coming from the portable heater on the floor near them. The coil inside was a bright red. It lit the room up with a steady glow. Hannibal must have found it. It made Will think of Hell.

“Was it how you fantasized it?” Hannibal asked. He had spread a coat like a blanket over Will and himself. They should warm up.

“No,” Will croaked out. Hannibal had put tape over the wound in his cheek, but he felt the flesh gaping and open inside. “It’s never like we think it’ll be. There is always more.”

“How did you envision it?”

“Like...” His hands closing like a vice and Hannibal never stopping breathing. He would just eventually burst apart to reveal a mass of blood that spread until there was nothing else to see. Like Randall Tier. Who had not been broken apart, but had only slowly become softer, the flesh malleable and rigid at the same time. “Like I was the only movement in a motionless world of things. Everything I was, was comprised into my hands.” Will felt Hannibal’s warmth along his side. Or was it the pulsing of blood. “Not powerful. But inevitable, like I’d become fate.”

Not raising his eyes, Will only traced the path of the red light on the coat’s material. It covered him up to the chest. His pants had dried somewhat. “A breath of freedom. Holding on the thread of your life above the fathoms of Hades,” Hannibal said.

“It was the only way I imagined touching you,” he said. “To kill you.”

“What makes you think it wasn’t something I wanted from you?” Hannibal said, his voice thickening.

“We just didn’t die.”

“You have always longed for death, Will. If only out of curiosity.”

Will looked down. He felt like his hands could never hold anything anymore. Mind and body. All was weak, _his fingers shaking on Abigail’s neck, failing to hold the blood inside, like they would have failed to hold water_. “Killing and saving aren’t so different. Both try to turn time around,” he said.

“Both are transformations. And in both, there is a possibility of grace.”

“I was hoping for a shock. For something that would push me into it,” Will said.

“Into the chasm, like in a jaw.”

“To push me into it,” Will realized, softly. “Like you would have.”

“To entangle us with the forces of nature and life.”

“If anything, I’d like to go on record. Saying that I tried everything,” Will whispered.

Hannibal was silent beside him, smiling softly. Soon after, he sagged against the wall, unconscious. Will followed him shortly.


	4. 4.

It was already noon when Clarice Starling arrived at the crime scene. She had placed her letter back in her pocket. When leaving the FBI Headquarters, she had obtained a badge and the authorization to carry her weapon out of training grounds. But her gun was in her locker at the shooting range in Quantico. She was unarmed and pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

Although the sun was high and bright in the sky, a wicked wind came from the sea.

She found Jack Crawford at the back of the house. The body of Dolarhyde was being removed, the large black forensics bag containing it was loaded on a gurney. Starling felt like the house was watching her, foreign and dangerous, with all its eyes of glass.

Jack had seen her, but he kept looking at the sea, shoulders bunching in his coat. “For a long time, it was like I was walking on a frozen lake, with creatures swimming under my feet in a kind of twilight,” he said, when she walked up to him. “The ice broke.”

“What did you think would happen?”

He smiled, thin and veiled, away. “I expected an ending. I just didn’t expect that ending to be you.”

Clarice listened to the ocean’s murmur. She knew Jack still played tennis, but she liked running. Alone on the road, no one to look at her, no one to care, as far as her legs could carry her, and they were good legs. “It’s been over since some time, Jack.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes, understanding. For a moment, she thought he would step closer. He stayed away, dignified. “I thought you wanted to go into research, leave the Bureau.” He furrowed his brow. “Your timing couldn’t be better.”

“It’s…” She sighed. “Political. Choice doesn’t seem like the right word too.”

Nodding, Jack slipped his hands in the pockets of his coat. She remembered him wearing it. She remembered it being familiar. “When Hannibal was imprisoned, I thought it was as much a new beginning as an end.” He snorted.

“If you keep talking like that, we’ll have to make it official,” she said.

“This isn’t?”

Clarice stepped back. “No,” she said. “Just thought I’d say hi.”

“Let’s go inside. Get started. Agent Starling.”

“Not an agent,” she reminded him.

“Just Starling then.”

 

* * *

 

It was still night outside, but a noise, louder and louder, had dragged Will from sleep. Rain, he realized, on the store’s roof, and the faraway rumbling of the ocean, and howling wind. Like every seed planted would need water to grow and unfold, so would they. “These dreams, in which you killed me, were they agreable?” Hannibal said, his voice so distant, Will stopped thinking he was awake.

He _was standing on the cliff, near Dolarhyde’s body, wings detaching from his sides slowly as the sun rose. “Not... not really, no,” Will said. “Sometimes you talked to me. Most of the time you were just smiling.”_

_Hannibal’s clothing was bloodless, impeccable. Will tested his right leg, his right shoulder. No wound. No pain. All new. Hannibal sat down on one of the seats and crossed his hands in his lap. “Like I dared you,” he said._

_“Yeah, like that.”_

_“Were you jealous of Francis Dolarhyde, when he hurt me in a way you couldn’t achieve?”_

_“No.” Will frowned. “I was... I don’t know exactly. Surprised,” he tried, moving away from Dolarhyde’s body, closer to the edge._

_“Surprised?”_

_His hand going to his right side, Will bunched the material of his shirt there. “Of the way I felt pierced with that bullet, like I was the one who’d been shot.”_

_Hannibal considered Will for a time. “You thought what we have could be broken. Do you still think that?”_

_Will turned around. “What we have,” he repeated, sternly._

_Running his fingers over the edge of the seat, Hannibal cocked his head. “Are you waiting for Jack to find us?”_

_Will’s throat was starting to feel dry. His shoulder ached but only numbly. He was starting to wake up. “I’m waiting for daylight.”_

_“There’s only darkness all around. You are the sole beacon of light, Will.”_

_“I never feel like it. It’s never light,” Will insisted._

_Hannibal got up. His hand covered his side. Underneath, blood was beginning to seep. His face was subtly twisting_ into an expression of subdued pain.

Distantly, Will thought that he had indeed woken up. He was not entirely sure. He stared ahead and the sun and the portable heater fused together in a red circle, burned on his retina. Rain would erase their footsteps in the sand, he thought.

 

* * *

 

The reporters were still kept at a distance from the house, almost 500 yards, near the first pine trees after the curve of the road. It was there that Jack saw her. She stood among the photographs and journalists, unfazed, motionless, observant, like she had waited all day long, like them. He had not seen her again since Florence. She had changed her looks. Instead of a rigid coat, she wore a black hoodie with a dark green sport jacket over it. The perfect student, young and hopeful, travelling abroad. Only her eyes were as focused as Jack remembered, black and wide, the ones of someone whose mind was set on hunting, no matter what happened, even with no prey in sight.

Starling in tow, he made his way over to the police line. Chiyoh stood directly behind it.

“Agent Crawford,” Chiyoh greeted.

Jack nodded. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that a question?”

The man did not speak for a while. A gust of wind came by and brushed by them, full of pine, forest and sediment. “Help me,” Jack said.

She tilted her head. “How could I?”

Jack ducked his nose in the raised collar of his coat. “Once again,” he insisted. “I ask you to please help me.”

Beginning to smile, Chiyoh said, “Which means you will soon stop asking.”

“Why are you here?”

The young woman lifted her chin. “I’m watching,” she said.

“Not intervening?” Jack asked.

“Where subatomic particles are concerned, watching is often already a form of intervention.”

Clarice warned two more reporters away. One of them still snapped a picture. Two agents were on him soon after. There was tugging and yelling. “We are in the real world, here,” Jack said, once things had quieted down. “No microparticles.”

“Real is a big word Mr. Crawford. Once you say it, it does not let you go. It’s got teeth.”

Yes, teeth, Jack thought. He stepped back from the police line and extended his hand, gesturing to Chiyoh to come with him. In one swift move, she bent down under the tape and followed. “Take her inside,” he told Starling. “We’ll need her ID. She may be a key witness.” Undisturbed, Chiyoh blinked slowly.

“Why?” Clarice asked, just as her fingers circled Chiyoh’s arm.

“We’ve met before,” Jack said. “In similar circumstances.”

  

* * *

 

Lounds scoffed. As soon as she could get away from the main reporter swarm, she checked her phone. Her picture of Jack Crawford was blurry at best. Half of his face was eaten by a piece of blue sky reflected in the window of the car. If she sized it down, she could maybe post it on the website, with her report of how the FBI BAU’s head had arrived in a local police car, hours after the usual staff, with no escort, suggesting an impending demise.

She was turning around to scan the crowd, when something caught her eye.

Smoke rising. Near the horizon.  

 

* * *

 

Starling had brought the young Asian woman back inside. They had settled in the dining room. Near them, the open door let the wind come in. It was full of sun and sand and rain soaking in the gravel. Clarice scrolled down through the other woman’s records on her phone. “Chiyoh Kusachi,” she read. Clicking a button on the tiny screen, Clarice started to record the conversation. “Currently an honors student in organic chemistry at Yale.” She placed the phone down on the table. “Why are you in Maryland?”

“Taking a break from school.”

“Where did you first meet Jack Crawford?”

Chiyoh Kusachi sat still, rigid, yet smooth, entirely unafraid. “Do you work for him?” she asked, peacefully. Her voice was slightly accented. Japanese was an obvious guess, but Clarice suspected there was something else in there as well.

“If you’d rather have a lawyer here for this, it’s fine. We can call him for you,” she explained. She checked her phone again, raised her eyebrows. “This house is registered in a fake name that’s an anagram of yours, Uhikah Soychi. Did Lecter tell you that?”

This time, there was a slight frown. No clear feeling yet. There was no trace of anything that could link her to Hannibal Lecter. Knowing Lecter, there would not be any, Clarice was sure. “No,” Chiyoh said.

“We kept track of all people who requested to see Dr Lecter during his imprisonment. You didn’t,” Clarice went on. “You’re not really close to him, are you?”

“No one ever is,” the young woman said. Her gaze travelled in the room, resting on all things near her, examining, searching for a clue, an escape.

Clarice examined her surroundings, then leaned back in her seat. She caught a glimpse of Jack, hovering near the doorway. “Do you think he’s dead?” she asked. “Do you want to make sure he’s dead?” she pressed.

“I’m indifferent. Are you?”

“Indifference is very rarely an authentic motivation,” Clarice countered. “I’m trying to understand. For now, everything I have are shadows and doubts.” She had less than that. She had empty rooms with blood. An abandoned knife. A recording which she could not view before analysis was completed. A crashed prison van. And Jack Crawford. There was Jack.

Reaching out to twist a piece of dark, dried vine from the centerpiece between her index finger and thumb, Chiyoh watched it disintegrate in her grip. Black flakes dotted the table. “It looks like shadow until it turns out to be light.”

Clarice smiled. “I bring the light,” she said. “At least, it’s what I was asked to do. The machine is using me now, because it can’t really afford the sun at the moment. Power is a sick thing.” She got up, clicked her phone shut. From Chiyoh’s stillness, she knew she would not get anymore now.

The agent clipped handcuffs on Ms. Kusachi’s hands. She presented her wrists and held them together.  “Until you cooperate, we’ll have to keep you in custody as a potential witness. Do you understand?”

“Cooperation is such an insubstantial thing,” Chiyoh said, as the contents of her pockets were emptied on the table before her.

Outside, officers and staff gathered in front of the windows, looking at the north. Some of them jogged out of sight. Clarice was on her feet already.

 

* * *

 

Will woke to the feeling of a distant, but firm touch on his forearm, rhythmical, insistent. Like a beating heart, but more delicate. The wave of pain had engulfed him before he opened his eyes. At the back of the room, the red coil of the portable heater filled the small room with its gleam.

Hannibal’s fingers tapped regularly on a point above Will’s wrist. It took Will some time to recognize some organized rhythm in the movement, keys that were not there being hit, held down, then released, the shadow of the harpsichord melody triggered _mixed memories. The prison walls, so black when they turned the lights off for the night. The slow realization, as he shifted on the damp cot, that he had never seen Dr Hannibal Lecter play the harpsichord in his office. And yet Will knew what it sounded like. Along with the music, he remembered flashes of a stroboscopic light._

“What are you playing?” he asked.

The other man’s eyes were shut. He breathed an answer. Among the fluid, foreign words, Will understood Rachmaninoff. But nothing else.

When Hannibal opened his eyes, Will found them nervous and shining. Hannibal spoke again. This time, the only thing Will understood was his name. The rest of the wheezed Lithuanian was lost on him.

Will twisted his hand into Hannibal’s grip and touched his fingertips to the other man’s skin. The heat of it was inviting, almost comforting.

This was death, too.

Outside, dawn was there. Will let go of Hannibal’s hand. When he got to his feet, his legs were steel, blood and pain.


	5. 5.

Will’s head swam in the sludge of his senses. He had painstakingly slipped on a coat, thought of taking a rifle, but not with only one good arm and too little strength. Hannibal was in and out of consciousness, sometimes whispering words, sometimes only breathing. Out the front step, the beach was a slightly darker gray than the sky now, which was darker still than the roiling sea. The long-awaited dawn was coming.

He could barely move his right leg. His eyes hurt. He went to one of the glass casings and considered the knives. They would need bigger ones than the one he had taken earlier to remove their clothes. When he stared back up, _Hannibal gazed at him. His hair was longer again, slicked and parted on the side. He wore a three-piece suit, mostly gray with a red, black and cream plaid pattern that radiated softly in the shadows. “This is very easy, Will,” he said, toeing the broken glass on the floor. “Simply walk out the door. Fever is there already. Next comes septicimia,” he listed, impassive. “Then nothing. A few hours and Earth will find itself strolling along its indifferent path without the fleck of my soul.”_

_Will’s left hand tightened on the knife he held. Since he had woken up, his entire right arm had begun to feel doughy and colder. “You could still wake up,” he mumbled, eyes drawn to the entrance to the back room. “You would come after me if I left you. Chase after me until we reach Hell.”_

_“To push you in,” Hannibal offered with a growing smile._

_The world was spinning around Will. “I would let you.”_

_Taking his finger along a shard of glass, Hannibal pressed it down until blood appeared. “Because your death, I own it now.”_

_The knife would be useless, Will realized. In the past years, he had not used a knife, except to prepare fish, the blade into the side, then around the head, then take the offal out through the gills, little blood, Molly’s smile in the kitchen’s white, pure walls. “You own me.”_

_“You are much more than your death, just as you’re much more than your life, Will,” Hannibal said. “Are you afraid?”_

_“It’s…” It hurt to swallow. “It’s not exactly fear,” he answered._

_Hannibal had walked to the other end of the room and now observed the dawn coming, brighter with each moment. “Fright is a common occurrence in you. There are endless types and sorts of it.”_

_“It’s the solid type. I can walk on it, like it's glass, spread over the abyss.”_

_“This way you can look down at the void under your feet, but not fall.”_

_Will stiffened. “But whatever scares me, it can’t take anything from me that isn’t the rhythm of my breathing, the sting of my eyelids when they fall, the smell of seawater…” he said._

_“You should hurry. Shock will settle in.”_

_“I can’t even run, I’ll barely be able to hold you up,” Will countered._

_By the window, Hannibal turned around carefully. “You’re thinking that maybe the Dragon did break you,” he said. “Maybe now you are trapped inside the dream of death you called upon yourself.”_

_“Half a death,” Will said. “Just a lot of blood.”_ _He shivered. The throb in his shoulder wrapped around his spine, threatening to snap it._

_“Death never comes in halves or parts,” Hannibal said. “It is sublime in its spontaneity.”_

Will closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the other man was gone. The only Hannibal with him was the wounded one, beads of sweat on his brow, mumbling soft words to absent or past shapes. Maybe Will had talked too, during the darkest hours of the encephalitis, spent sweating and quivering in Hannibal's office.

 

* * *

 

_Clarice had been to the BSHCI archives before. A gargantuan room in the basement, distinctly clean with a feel of age in the old paint. Boxes stacked on mobile racks and a lone computer screen, with a blinking cursor waiting for input. A distant peace in the silence._

_This was nothing like it. As soon as she stepped under the main entrance’s arch, the sunlight diminished into a gray and fresh dusk. She went past the first set of doors, then she checked with the entrance booth. Then another pair of doors, those were clear, bullet-proof glass, thick and sound. Right after them, Alana Bloom waited. “Clarice Starling?” she asked._

_Clarice turned. Dr. Bloom was a woman as thin and as small as herself. Her suit was a dark blue, with a chiffon blouse underneath. “Yes.” She nodded, smiled. “Hi, Dr. Bloom.”_

_Dr. Bloom shook her hand, firm and cool, her eyes forever guarded, never trusting again. “Never been to the BSHCI?”_

_They started toward the stairs. “Only to the archives.” Clarice clipped the badge she had been handed to the lapel of her gray jacket. “Do you give guided tours?”_

_Cracking a smile, Dr. Bloom let her face soften, then it was gone again. “I thought you could have wanted to see the inmates. As part of your research,” she said._

_There it was then. Clarice had wondered when would the subject of her visit come up. All she knew of Alana Bloom was from her work for the FBI as a consultant, then some of her research, then her testimony in the trial, most of it in written form. Her e-mail had been poised with politeness, inviting her to the BSHCI for a professional meeting. “My paper was about institutional perception of Stockholm syndrome and rooting disorders. I used mostly files, reports, images. I don’t work with case subjects or patients, just with what we think we know about them. Or what we base that knowledge on, whether it’s distance or closeness.”_

_On one side of the wide corridor, there were offices, with name tags on doors and pictures of children attached to the computer screens visible through the open doors. On the other side, a row of tall windows, with waves of blazing sunlight crashing in. “You try to understand what happens from a distance? Wouldn’t that distort perception?” Dr. Bloom asked, her large bun of hair taking a red hue in the shine._

_Clarice blinked. “I try to understand what happens when we try to understand from a distance. People think that, when they use a magnifying glass, they’re transported closer to their object. I wonder what’s in the magnifier,” she said. They had reached an elevator and waited for it to come up. “Where are we going?”_

“ _I want to show you something.” They walked into the elevator. Dr. Bloom closed two metallic doors after them. The elevator started down and Clarice breathed out slowly and thought of an open space, with uneven grass and a blind blue sky. “Don’t you think your analysis could have been better from meeting your subjects in person?” Dr. Bloom asked._

_Pursing her lips, Clarice looked at the other woman’s twisted reflection in the elevator’s wall. “This conversation is weird, because I know you know them,” she said. Dr. Bloom stiffened somewhat, not angry, but displeased anyway. “They’re just paper to me. It’s not little, but it is safe.”_

“ _It’s alright,” Dr. Bloom said, just as the elevator’s doors opened again. “What do you think them to be?”_

“ _Mental constructions. Projections of what we’d like to see. Shapes in a narrative,” she explained. “Persons, never more than indirectly so.”_

_They were in the basement now. The electrical light was cold and a strange shade of yellow. “Why the distance?”_

“ _If we want to understand them, we cannot get close to them. If we do get close, it’s something else, something alright, but not knowledge or understanding.”_

_They had reached a gate with a single guard on post, reading a comic book. He handed his keys over to Dr. Bloom and she unlocked the heavy door. “Will Graham would disagree with you.”_

_She tilted her head down. “I know.”_

_They slowed down. Clarice clutched her bag. On her left, there were empty cells, old-fashioned, with battered ground and bars. “How is your training going?” Bloom asked her. Clarice wondered if it was normal to feel led around, drawn into something else by all these questions that mapped her. Or was Dr. Bloom just trying to tell her where she was getting. “How do you like it?”_  

_“I want to do it.”_

“ _Wanting and liking are different.”_

_It would make sense. All the cells were empty, but well-maintained. It would be a good place to house a dangerous inmate. “Once I’m there, I can tell you if I like it,” she said. “Is this where... Hannibal Lecter is?”_

_Alana Bloom had a wide, but fine smile, as if she was satisfied, soothed. “No. This was Will Graham’s cell, when Hannibal framed him for Abigail Hobbs’ murder. Among others.” She pointed at the cell a few feet from them, identical to the others._

“ _Dr. Chilton allowed Hannibal Lecter to visit. He monitored the conversations, but destroyed the files,” Clarice retold, almost to herself, walking closer to the dark, enclosed space. The bed was still there, with the thin mat rolled at an end. A pipe leaked into a small pond near the farthest wall, all humid stone._   _Tucking her hair behind her ear, Clarice frowned. “Why did you want to meet me?”_

_Dr. Bloom walked closer to the cell, ran a finger on a bar, her lips twitching. “Hannibal Lecter has requested to see you. He’s read your paper. Says he finds your argument interesting,” she explained. “He’d like to discuss it.”_

_No one knew exactly where Lecter was in the hospital. His location was considered confidential, even within the Bureau. “But I’m not going to see him, am I?” Clarice guessed._

_A light bulb flickered nearby. Dr. Bloom eyed it pensively. “Hannibal draws people to himself. They’re his only source of authentic amusement,” she said._

_Clarice shook her head. “It’s a test, isn’t it?” From the way Dr. Bloom looked at her, straight and forward, she knew she was right. Something in Bloom’s honesty gripped her, like suffering._

“ _I can show him to you,” Bloom said, after a moment, as if agreeing to a silent deal._

“ _I don’t understand-…” Clarice started._

_Dr. Bloom pulled her phone from her pocket and touched it noiselessly. Then she handed it out to the younger woman. Clarice hesitated, because this, too, was a test. She took the phone and stared at the image of a cell, much bigger than the ones around them, with no apparent bars. In a corner of the image, sitting on his bed, cross-legged, was Hannibal Lecter, nearly motionless._

“ _He abides by a regular schedule,” Dr. Bloom explained. “8 hours of sleep, every night, from 10 pm to 6 am. Meals and visits at fixed hours. We take a glass of wine together every Monday and Thursday, at 5, followed by a meal once a month.”_

_Clarice had seen footage of Hannibal Lecter, possibly all the official footage from the Bureau’s archives. But this was live. There was no meeting more indirect than this, yet she felt altogether strangely closer than what she had expected. But then, she had not expected something like this. A thin, lean man, reading, constant, absorbed. As one would on a lazy Sunday morning. On the feed, Hannibal Lecter paused his reading to smooth a line on the bedding. Calm the way panthers are calm. Clarice made a mental note that she was right about the OCDs she had postulated._

“ _You’re examining my level of interest,” Clarice stated._

_Dr. Bloom approved, her tied brown hair framing her features in an aura of dark. “You don’t seem too curious.”_

“ _Is that not the appropriate response?”_

_The other woman smiled. “I don’t think it’s not anything. I think it’s tactful, diplomatic, not aggressive.”_

“ _Hannibal Lecter drew people to him based on the optical illusion of sanity. An aggregate of beliefs which together gave an impression of personality,_ _” she said._ “ _I have no false ideas about him.”_

_Moving closer, Dr. Bloom crossed her arms on her chest, eyes lost in the cells around them. “Everyone has false ideas about Hannibal. Any idea of Hannibal is never exact.”_

“ _You try to warn people and, in fact, you might be creating interest.”_

“ _I don’t want to diminish interest in Hannibal. If he becomes uninteresting to the world, he’ll become…_ ” _She turned away for a moment and became lost in something that she saw and that no one else could see. “Aggravated. I just want to diminish expectations.”_

_“You think Lecter’s searching for someone like Graham, right?” she probed._

_“I think he wants to talk,” Bloom corrected, softly._

_Clarice exhaled slowly. The air was cooler down here and her breath warmed her lips. “I don’t,” Clarice said. “Tell him-…”_

“ _I won’t tell him anything at all,” Dr. Bloom interrupted her. “I’ll walk you out,” she said._

_On the way out, Clarice surveiled the bars of the cells they passed. Everywhere there were cuts, chunks. The ground was uneven, the walls were covered in dirty drawings, clawed words, forgotten graffitos on the bricks on ruins. There were no bars in Hannibal Lecter’s cell. Starling wondered if he was even in this building. To be forgotten until he became as insane as his floating, budding legend made him to be._

 

* * *

 

In the main room, Will went to the camping gear. He pulled out a large portable propane stove, disconnected the two gas bottles and opened the valves. Near the door, he wrapped a t-shirt around a matchbox, cracked a match and watched the flame kindle, dwindle, then start eating the cotton slowly. 

When he returned from the staff room, supporting Hannibal’s weight as best he could, he could ear the gas hissing. The flames climbed along the wood of the doorframe. Will eyed the shelves of butane canisters, hoped it would work.

They were only 200 feet away when the small shop exploded. Will stumbled, winced. Hannibal's hands grasped loosely at his shirt. The road was right ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love to all. - x -


	6. 6.

* * *

 

 _Palmierite (n.):_ A mineral compound created by the oxidation of potassium, lead and sodium. It is found as an aggregate in paintings using ultramarine as a color. Its source remains a mystery as these paintings contain no potassium.

 

* * *

 

The ghostly noise of computer keys was balanced with the even steps of Kade Prurnell.

Class was over. Miriam Lass circled her desk and answered two more questions as the students and trainees started to walk out. Prurnell came forward. She wore a black sharp suit with a pale orange blouse underneath. Miriam focused on the color for a time and, as she tried to remember what it made her think of, recalled the technique she had discussed with her therapists. _Let the memory go. See the object connected to it floating in void. It’s undefined for now. As bland as it is, file it away in its own box. Wait until you can connect it with something else. Don’t insist._ Before she had managed to stop staring at the collar of Prurnell’s blouse, there was the image of a sun coming up or coming down, faraway on the ocean, the waves stretching up to the other side of the world.

“Professor Lass,” Prurnell greeted. “I apologize. Hard times, correct?”

“Not a lot harder than usual.” She reached for her pointer, closed her laptop. “Definitely less difficult than my testimony,” she said. “They found something about me, didn’t they?”

Prurnell leaned against the desk, her face unreadable. “You could be a big help in the investigation,” she admitted.

“What investigation?”

Prurnell tapped a knuckle on the wood of the desk. “Hannibal Lecter is presumed dead. We’ll close the case. You could consult.”

Miriam blinked, something starting to grow restless inside her. Then she bent her head, afraid it would show. She piled the files together, they joined her laptop in her bag. Face still rigid, she looked up at Prurnell. “What did they find?”

“DNA,” Prurnell said. “He might have kept you there.”

“Where?” she asked, even as the answer formed in her mind in the form of a ball of glass and walls and roof, rolling toward the cliff, threatening to fall down.

“A house in Maryland, near Delaware.”

Miriam opened her mouth, hesitated. “Near the sea… The meandering sea,” she added.

The other woman cocked her head, perplexed. “Yes. On the coast.”

* * *

 

Dr. Nour Ayesh opened her eyes and searched her silent bedroom, the dawn drawing a pale pulse in the closed white blinds. She wondered if the noise had just been in her dream. She startled as the strong hits started again, sounding distant enough, but much too close. Stuffing panic in the back of her throat, she slid out of bed and reached for the baseball bat that she kept between the bed and the bedside table, the aluminium slightly brighter than the wall in the dark.

Her palms weren’t sweating, so that was good. She gripped the bat with both hands and stepped in the corridor outside, her mind fixated on her phone, downstairs, where she had left it to charge by the computer near the cash.

As she started to go down the steps, the noise became closer, clearer. Banging on the door to the pharmacy, rhythmical, but tired, something heavy, metallic against the lock she clicked in place every night. In the next room, all dogs were barking in their cages.

Fallow was a small town. And the veterinary clinic was far into the woods, at the end of an isolated road, with only pines and tracks all around. People had broken in twice in the past, but it had been a while. Five years ago. They were faster usually, busted the fridge, grabbed the opioids and left. Last time, she had not caught them in the act.

Maybe it was better that way.

She saw the torn open door first, the one that led to the porch in the back. The wood and metal around the handle had been pried and brought to shreds. The door to the pharmacy was right on her left, but the banging had stopped. Nour breathed in the cold morning air coming in a rush from outside. She wrapped her fingers tighter around the handle of the bat and stepped around the corner.

At the last moment, she heard a raspy intake of breath, but she wasn’t ready when the intruder grasped her left arm and twisted it backward. The bat fell to the ground with a loud cling. Stifling a cry, she turned and managed to push her assaillant back into the wall, her elbow into his stomach. He hit the wall with a grunt.

For a while, neither of them moved. He still held her arm back, near disarticulation, but she had braced her feet on the ground and pinned him to the wall. They stayed like that, frozen together. She listened to his breathing, shallow, quick and wheezy, and she understood the cold she felt soaking into her pajama top was blood when she noticed the dark, red handprints near the pharmacy door, on the fire extinguisher he had used on the lock.

His voice was rough, tired, searching for words, spoken somewhere behind her, near her neck. This close, he smelled of sweat and something else. “I don’t intend to hurt you. But I need you to open that door.”

“We don’t have a lot of morphine,” she stuttered. Seaweed and seawater, that’s what he smelled like.

She felt him shake his head against her shoulder, his arms quivered where they bound her around the chest. “Not morphine,” he said. “Antibiotics. Stitches. Gauze, tape. A couple bags of IV fluids.”

For the next few seconds, she counted the beats of his heart, trying to disentangle them from her own. They both resonated in her back. His were much faster. “You’re in shock,” she realized.

His fingers tightened on her arm to the point her hand tingled. “Open it.”

“I will. I will,” she breathed. “If you promise me something.”

“All ears.”

“Just don’t hurt the animals and I’ll give you everything you want.”

With a sudden jerk, he let her arm go and pushed her away. She spun around to see the knife he was holding. The blade was low, not pointed at her, but it shone brightly, as if it was an extension of his hand. She scrambled for the bat. He let her do. “I just want the medicine. And I’ll go,” he said.

“I’ll get the key, but I’m keeping the bat.”

He stepped forward, out of the shadows. She saw the blood inking his face and shoulder. “Suit yourself,” he said. And he folded the knife and put it back in his pocket, fingers shaking.

Nour rested the tip of the baseball bat on the ground. Looking around, she saw more blood on the door, the counter, the floor. “You’re losing blood,” she said.

“I’ve been doing that for a while now. It’s surprising there’s any left.”

She lifted her eyes to his face. For a moment, it was like a feeling of deja-vu, a flicker at the back of her mind, not unlike a memory that can’t quite stay afloat. Then it came back to her vividly. He wasn’t wearing the same clothes and his hair was plastered on his head, but the wound on his face didn’t change the shape of his jaw. His picture had been on CNN yesterday, she’d listened to the details of the prison escape over lunch. It all returned to her now. She gripped the bat tighter.

Will Graham watched Dr. Ayesh’s expression change. “Say it,” he whispered. “What you’re thinking.”

She stilled and knew that it was the beginning of the end of her life. The high-pitched barks from the next room. The indistinct bleakness around them. Her clinic scavenged. “The news said you were dead.”

“That was the point.” He closed his eyes. She didn’t know if it was in pain or not. “The medicine?” Dr. Ayesh started to move. The bat, growing heavier, was sliding out of her grip now. Adrenaline was slowly being replaced by fright, rising like a solid tide. It made her want to bow her head, curl in a ball and never open her eyes again. “Wait. Do you do surgeries here?”

“Sometimes.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled the knife back out. The gleam of the blade was fading as all around them was being replaced with the faint gray of dawn. “I’d never hurt an animal. But I’ve hurt people before.” The words fluttered between them. The walls of the room pulsated slowly around her. “You’ll be fine. Drop the bat. Come with me.”

He moved arduously toward the door, dragging his right leg and he waited for her there. Calm in a crystalline way, as if he was absent, in fact. She felt the bat slip from her hand slowly. It dropped to the ground with a metallic sound that echoed around them.

Hannibal Lecter was in the back of an old burgundy Oldsmobile, skin clammy and pale, breathing inaudible, a coat draped over him. Nour took in the shattered window on the driver’s side, the wires sticking out under the wheel, the smell of life going back to being cells, skins, liquids. She pulled the coat back to expose the sliced shirt and the bandage underneath, soaked thoroughly with blood.

“Bullet’s out?”

“Through the front.”

“How long ago?”

“Ten hours.”

Nour straightened and pulled back from the car. Her breathing was nervous and quick, but her hands were steady, even if she wished they weren’t. “If it’s his bowel, there’s nothing I can do at this point.”

Will Graham leaned against the hood, his hand leaving a bloodied trace on it. He nodded blankly.

 

* * *

 

They had landed low on the beach, almost eight miles north of Lecter’s house. Clarice jumped down from the inflatable boat. The detonation's range reached 60 feet in perimeter. The small shop was still mostly standing: the porch and facade had been blown to shreds, but the other walls stood still, shrunken and black. Inside, flames had devoured everything, clothes, fishing rods, glass, guns. Wood and debris covered the rough sand. Near the entrance, a smoking pile of melted plastic gave off a violent smell that caught in her throat and made her eyes glisten.

Jack had been sent along in one of the first boats. He was thirty feet away, speaking with the shop's owner, a short man with a protruding belly, curly hair, who had an air of martyrdom about him, sweat beading on his forehead even though it was a cool morning. The FBI staff had cordoned off the area and waited for personnel from the fire department to make sure the ammunitions inside wouldn't go off. A bit farther, a few agents prepared evidence bags. Near a van, above the beach, she recognized two BAU agents. They were watching a woman, short and small, pale skin and a crown of flaming red hair, magnified and thickened by the water. She was wearing a thick black diving suit, still wet and glistening from the sea. Her goggles hung around her neck and she had twisted her feet out of her flippers.

An officer was coming toward Clarice from the road above. “Clarice Starling?”

She blinked and rubbed her eyes. There was still dust and smoke in the air. “Yes?”

“Express delivery,” said the tall, thin man wearing the uniform of local police. Young, strangely enthusiastic. “For you.”

She took the envelope he held out. Small and white, with the Bureau’s three bold letters in the corner. Under it, the name, position and office of Kade Prurnell. Inside, she found a plastic card, white, the size that would fit in a badge pocket. It had her picture and it said ‘Special Investigator Clarice Starling’. At the back, in small red print at the bottom, above Prurnell's signature, it was specified that the card expired in one month. 

Special investigator. The words sounded foreign. In her eyes, she was only someone who wanted to know.

She handed the young man the empty envelope back and pocketed the card.

 


	7. 7.

Things went fuzzy for a while, with moments blending together until they were a river. Will didn’t remember helping Hannibal out of the car or onto the operating table. Yet, there his body was, flat, pale on the polished steel, curled on its side, held by straps, eyes closed, breathing imperceptible. Will was in a chair, slumped on his right side, trying to keep his head up.

Time was a puddle. Eventually, he became aware that the previously early morning had become brighter.

“What’s your name?” he whispered.

“Ayesh. Nour Ayesh,” the veterinarian said.

She was in her mid-forties, tiny but with strong, nervous arms, that could hold down dogs as heavy as herself, even if they were in pain and scared. She seemed tense and trying not to show it.

She filled a syringe from a glass vial, then another one. One of them went into Hannibal’s side, near the exit wound. Now that the bandage was off, the injury bled slowly, seemed to pulsate, more alive than all the pale colors around it. The other syringe went into his back for the entry wound, out of Will’s sight.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of Hannibal. He couldn’t see his face from where he was, only the back of his head. Dr. Ayesh had covered most of his body with blue surgical drapes. It felt like Will had never been closer to him, now that Hannibal was only flesh. “Why are you doing this?” Will asked.

The veterinarian’s hands stopped. “I’m scared.”

“That means I must be scary.”

She paused and reached for a sponge behind her to clean the wound. “Even animals can be scary, when you don’t know what they’re thinking.”

“Do you believe me when I say I won’t hurt you?” Will said. It had been a long time since he hadn’t known if he was dreaming or not.

“I wouldn’t be scared if I did,” Dr. Ayesh said. She looked up at him. She could only have waited for him to drop the knife. “You’ll pass out.”

Will shook his head. His tongue was attached to the side of his mouth, bathing in the blood that pooled inside. Words were slurry. “I can be insistent, when need be.” He searched for the woman’s eyes. “You could kill us.”

She had the scalpel in her hand now. Will watched her feel the skin, so pale, it seemed green and gray. “No, I don’t think I could do that.”

“There’s a difference between imagining what you could do and what happens when circumstances become too much.”

“What do you mean too much?”

The room around Will pulsated with pain, as if it was dying. He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. Was he the still beating heart or the dead muscle trapped within the ribcage? The cage was starting to fade around him, becoming clouds, then this particular shade of blue that the sea took in the early morning, when you couldn’t know if it was ocean or sky. He clutched the knife and it seemed like the only thing in the world.

_On the table, Randall Tier eyes stared up. Will knew that he needed the mostly animal parts, not the organs inside, the soft and the private, where one is most intimate, the places that people didn’t see of themselves. Nails and arms, legs and feet, teeth. The animal is the most visible. He brushed his fingers against Randall Tier’s. He had killed him with his hands. No claws, no fangs._

_He had brought a Bulleit bottle, but now he wanted to be as awake as possible. His fingers were cold and it was only when the blade sunk in the young man’s neck, below the ear, that he knew what he should do. He focused on Tier’s face then, because he thought that if he stared down at his hands, it’s Hannibal’s darker skin, slimmer fingers that he would see._

He felt a hand on his shoulder and startled up from where he had fallen against the wall, half-conscious.

Dr. Ayesh jumped back. 

“Is he dead?” Will rasped.

She shook her head. “I need you to keep the wound open. I’ll use both my hands.”

Will stumbled to his feet, knife in hand. He had never let it go. Hannibal was still lying on the operating table. A strand of pale hair came out from underneath the drapes, where his head would be. The monitors showed a heartbeat, in tiny blue and red lines, but it didn’t beep. Everything except this was just black. “Both your hands?”

“I severed the artery and vein, but I have to detach the kidney from the cavity,” she said. “You’ll need to drop the knife.”

Will went to her side, right foot dragging, his breath like fire against his cheek. “A kidney.”

She showed him the two clamps prying the wound wide open. Inside, the darker meat of the organ was partially hidden under stitched muscles and a pale twist of intestine. 

“Keep it,” Will said. “He’ll want to look at it.” Placing the knife on Hannibal’s limp body, Will held the clamps in unsteady hands, remembering how steady they had been for Randall Tier. Finally, he had a clear vision. _Not the face, he couldn’t keep the face intact. Too human, too soft, too much skin. Tier wanted for parts of him to be connected otherwise. Only the animal parts. He started to detach the jaw. There was a moment of twilight and he pulled the lips of Hannibal’s wound open until the skin tore far into his back and there was nothing else than blood._

 

* * *

 

Clarice was not assigned to the main investigation. She stayed a few steps behind Jack and listened in, eyes on the smoking remnants of the house. The fire department people were beginning to approach the scene now. When he saw her, Jack cocked his head her way and took her to meet Agents Price and Zeller. The woman with them was a journalist, Freddie Lounds, who Clarice knew by reputation only. Who'd been arrested for trespassing, Price explained.

“You’ll probably find a hipbone,” Lounds said, her long fingers clasped elegantly together in her lap, partly hiding the cuffs. “Or a set of teeth. If you’re real thorough,” she added, mouth twisting.

“Femurs have a higher density, actually,” Zeller pointed out.

“More flesh around hipbones. Burns slower. More chance bone was preserved,” she opposed.

“Thighs are pretty fatty,” Price said.

Lounds tilted her head to the side, granting the point. “Hipbones make for nicer pictures though.”

“How many hipbones have you seen, anyway?” Zeller asked Lounds.

“I don’t keep a count. Do you?”

“I must have seen... like a thousand?”

Price huffed. “You’re exaggerating.”

Zeller peacocked. “Not really, no.”

“Yes,” Price said. “A few hundreds tops.”

“Hundreds? Come on-...”

“Hipbones aside, do you have a theory on all this?” Freddie Lounds said. “What’s the story? They escaped, were stranded here, blew up the place as a cover up?” She turned to Jack, who returned her stare sternly. “Do you think Will Graham’s dead, Agent Crawford? I would quote you.”

“We’re-...” Price started. 

“Not talking to Tattlecrime,” Jack said.

“You guys are thinking they’re dead...”

“You didn’t even like Will,” Price said.

She nodded. “You don’t have to like a good story. Good story likes you. Did you?”

Jack didn’t answer. Zeller turned to Price: “I worked with this dude when I was a ME in Houston. Specialized in tissue density. Said a hipbone with severe osteoporosis could float. Looked like coral inside.”

 

* * *

 

_The difficulty to produce a psychological analysis of Hannibal Lecter originates in two separate sets of factors. On the one hand, typical psychiatry faces a methodological obstacle: one can invoke his extensive knowledge of psychiatric tools from clinical, historical and anthropological perspectives. This does not prevent the administration of tests, but may cause their results, and whatever diagnosis they point at, to be incomparable with others and inconsistent over time. On the other hand, one meets an objective hindrance: the pathology Lecter suffers from may be impossible to qualify by actual clinical psychiatry. We have chosen herein to study these set-backs from an anthropological point of view. In this paper, our first issue will be to examine Dr. Lecter’s written arguments – three articles, published in specialized journals since his arrest and incarceration, presenting as refutations of clinical studies of his own and similar cases – according to which his condition should not be treated as a clinical case, but as a moral one._

 

* * *

 

“My apologies. Sincerely.” Kade Prurnell leaned back in her chair, rigid, with nothing like an apology on her face. “But we cannot offer you protective custody at the time. By our best assumptions, it’s very unlikely that Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham have survived.”

“Jack Crawford doesn’t strike me as a man who makes assumptions,” Bedelia said. She had placed her wide-brimmed, lace-mounted hat over her folded hands in her lap. Beside her, the sun came into the room like the truth, blazing. Bedelia felt its warmth on the side of her face. She had brought a small handgun in her purse, as protection, she told herself. But she had not truly expected to be rejected.

“Who told you Jack Crawford was still in charge of this case?”

Bedelia smiled. “And so, he has won,” she said. “Instead of escaping from the walls that held him, he made the prison itself crumble.”

One of Ms. Prurnell’s eyebrows curled slowly upward. “Hannibal Lecter is dead.”

Bedelia took a moment to consider how abstract Hannibal’s death seemed. She imagined it like a cloud of shadows receding into a tiny dot that one would struggle to see. “I want to see his body,” she said.

“We’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time.”

Bedelia’s fingers ran along the crest of her hat that led to a peacock’s black feather. She placed her thumb over the green and blue eye. “How long do you plan to go on searching?”

Prurnell got up. Bedelia turned away to stare at the flooding sun from the window. “As of now, that’s confidential information,” Prurnell said. She waited until Bedelia stood and extended her hand. “Again, I’m sorry to cause you worry, Dr. Du Maurier. But I can recommend agencies that work in private security, if you’d find that reassuring. Dr. Alana Bloom has already retained services of that kind.”

The older woman smiled elegantly. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. She kept her hands on her hat, ignoring Prurnell's gesture. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Prurnell.”

 

* * *

 

The clock ticked slowly in the corridor adjacent to Kade Prurnell’s office. Waiting for her appointment to discuss her escort to the Lecter cliffside house this afternoon, Miriam kept her hands flat on her knees, gaze and mind lost in the gray concrete wall in front of her. Nearby, a plant stood lonely in a pot, too large for it, the bottom leaves yellowing out. She couldn’t stop hearing the sea, now. It rang in her ears, imitating the sough of blood and the high pitch of nerve conduction. It was comforting at first, she supposed, the ever-present noise, the birds above the house. She didn’t remember when it had stopped being comforting. Every time she tried to, her mind brought her back to the light silhouetting Frederick Chilton.

From behind the closed door, came the clear noise of heels against the floor. When it opened, Bedelia Du Maurier stepped out. She was putting on dark-green suede gloves, pulling on the cuffs to adjust the fit over her palms, then fisting her hands together to stretch the material. Miriam recognized her from the picture at the back of her book. “Miriam Lass,” Dr. Du Maurier said, her features slowly gathering around an expression of dignity, heedfulness and other things.

“Dr. Du Maurier,” Miriam said.

Kade Prurnell had escorted Du Maurier out of the room. She nodded to Miriam. “Give me a minute, Miriam, and I’ll be right with you.”

Miriam sat back in her chair. Things started to fall in place around her.

Bedelia Du Maurier considered her quietly, then said, “The other one of Hannibal’s captives.”

“They found the house. Where I was held,” Miriam said. “Do you remember a house?”

“Many houses. Streets, faces, deaths. The impossibility to escape the more invisible the bonds became.”

Running her right thumb over her prosthetic hand resting on her thigh, Miriam turned away. “They never found out what he gave me.”

“He may have made a specific mixture for each of us. Adjust the bars around the prisoner until they are but one skin,” Bedelia said. 

Clothed from head to toe, save for her face, Dr. Du Maurier seemed like a ghost, trapped in a body not entirely her own. It gave Miriam a strong deja vu sensation, stronger than anything before, like it resonated within her with Hannibal Lecter’s voice. “What did you ask for? Protective custody?”

Dr. Du Maurier nodded minutely, with a brief frown. “They refused.”

In Miriam, distrust set like runny cement turning solid. “He took something from all of us,” she said. “What did he take from you?”

The psychiatrist let the younger woman assess her from head to toe as she spoke, trying to peer underneath her coat, dress, hat and gloves, searching for the hidden missing parts inside. “Nothing. But our events were different. He had to leave, he was…” She searched for a word, lashes closing down over her eyes. “In haste. I was found as an unfinished work.”

“Do you feel lucky?”

“Not particularly,” Bedelia said. “How does it feel to know he deprived you of your arm?”

The fleeting edge of something coming over her. The flash of sunlight at the limit of her sight. A wind and motion with no name. “Impersonal,” Miriam answered. “I wasn’t a victim… I was just…”

“A guest in his life.”

“In a life I don’t know.”

Bedelia cocked her head. Miriam studied the feathers on her hat: peacock, in black, forest green and an inky blue, and snowy owl, bright and lively. “Do you want to know?” 

“No. I…” Miriam wondered if one day the words would feel right. “I wish I remembered talking with him.”

“You know you did converse with him?”

Miriam nodded, quick, brusque movements of her chin. “It wasn’t scary,” she said. “Did you?”

Offering her a teeth-showing smile, Bedelia smoothed the line of her shirtsleeve. “Every day.”

“What about? What does he talk about?”

“Art. Literature. Travels. Childhood.” Bedelia’s smile widened. “What did you talk with him about, Miriam?” 

Miriam’s mouth twisted in a nervous smile. “If you keep asking questions, I’m just going to keep saying that I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“Do you want to talk with him now?”

“He’s dead.” 

In Prurnell’s office, the voices on speaker phone had gone silent. There were a few slides of paper, the brush of a chair’s legs against the carpeting. “I don’t believe he is,” Bedelia said, securing the buttons on the gloves’ wrists. “Dying is… personal. The ocean is anonymous.”

“You think he’s been personal with you?”

Bedelia pursed her lips. “Your wants possess you, Miriam,” she said. “If you want to be talked to, talk. Even emptiness will eventually speak back.”

At the end of the corridor, a light flickered until the neon burned out and went dark. “I wished he’d killed me,” Miriam said.

“We all deal with our traumas in different ways. I don’t think this to be yours.”

“You don’t know me,” Miriam said.

“I believe you say that because you don’t know yourself,” Bedelia said. “I have known him. By proxy I must hold something of you.” The door to Prurnell’s office opened and Miriam got to her feet, mechanically, feeling emptier than before. The sensation that surrounded Bedelia Du Maurier refused to produce something else than a flare in her. The psychiatrist extended a hand, a card held between two fingers. “Call me. If need be.”

 


	8. 8.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 of The Lightest Way takes place during this chapter, or the next.

Once Jack Crawford had finished discussing with the explosives experts the Bureau had sent, he came to Starling’s side. Together they observed the twisted remains. Charred wood and ashened material, the throat-clenching smell of smoke between them. The hope of finding bones, burned skin and boiled blood in the debris.

“All the evidence of an accidental explosion,” Starling said.

“All of them,” Jack confirmed.

“Are you thinking a set up?”

Jack arched an eyebrow and turned to her slowly. “By whom, Starling?”

“From a technical point of view, are you thinking a set up?”

“No, I’m thinking adrenaline is a strange thing.” Jack had left his grey jacket in the car and changed into the common FBI gear. The sun was gone, every now and then, hidden behind large clouds, angry cumulus with bulging, round white mounds on top and dark, heavy gray bottoms beneath. Droplets from the nearby sea sprayed on both their coats, from time to time. “I lost three liters of blood, before they found me in Hannibal’s kitchen.”

She remembered when he had showed her the scar. It was then she had understood that she had one false assumption of this man. That he would not mix personal and professional and that there were no exceptions to that. “I know the file,” she said.

“According to every doctor who saw me, I should have died.”

“Bodies don’t respond so well to prescriptive imperatives. They don’t just do what they should, or shouldn’t. We understand them a lot less than we think.”

Crawford smiled. He was slightly thinner than when Clarice had met him. It made him look older. “Some things happen. In the field.”

She paused, tilted her face into the sun. The rays did not manage to shut out the cold wind from the sea. “Official question,” she announced. “Was that the rhetoric you presented Will Graham with when recruiting him for the Minnesota Shrike case?”

Jack’s face stilled like he was not expecting something and focused on thinking, all inward. “You’re going back to the point when Will went back in the field?”

“I quote Prurnell. The Lecter case. Since it’s been a case. End quote.”

“We’ll talk later then. Officially.” He slipped his hand out of his pocket, gestured between them. “What does the OIG want?”

“She wasn’t explicit about it,” Clarice said. “The Bureau will want things to quiet down. I assume fast, since they went for presumed dead this quick. Either they’re dead and everyone’s fine with it, or...” she started. “They’re not and we only need legitimate proof that we couldn’t know.”

“Which is right here.”

“Along with the 60-foot drop, the cold ocean, the night, the wounds inflicted. Hypothermia, most likely shock. In fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Adrenaline’s effect is particularly striking whenever fear is involved. It mimics the body’s signs of a flight response, which generates more fear, which augments adrenaline levels.” Jack said. “Are you afraid, Clarice?”

She smiled. “They’re paper to me, Jack.”

“Really?” he said.

 

* * *

 

From time to time, Hannibal’s eyelids fluttered. His right foot quivered with a tremor every few seconds. He seemed more than dead, not like a corpse, but as if he had never been alive at all, only a sum of electrical reactions. After the veterinarian had stitched Will’s shoulder, then his thigh, then his cheek, Will had taken her phone and told her to lock herself in her room upstairs. 

“I… I need to feed the pets first,” she said, her tired eyes blinking dryly.

“I’ll do it,” Will said.

“No,” she insisted.

When he had heard the lock to her room click down, the dragging of the chair on the floor upstairs, he had closed his eyes and taken the painkillers, numbness washing over the limbs and the nerves, something, finally that didn’t twist together in burning threads. He began to feel like a rock, solid and unmovable, and it was like falling asleep.

 

* * *

 

Much later, Will started to feel cold again. He saw that Hannibal was waking up. Will watched as he tightened a hand over the table’s edge, to brace for his weight if he had to get up. Then Hannibal’s eyes stopped on him and stayed there for a while, hooked into skin. “Judging from the smell, this is a veterinarian clinic,” he said. He pushed the blanket back. His chest was still marred in dried blood.

“It is.”

“How far. From the coast?” Hannibal’s trembling fingers trailed on his side and he closed his eyes as they neared the thick bandage on his abdomen.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Will said. “You had a fever.” He gestured to the few metallic bowls, scattered on the tray near the gurney. One held gauze soaked in blood, the other was filled with medical instruments and distilled water that had turned red. The third was the one Will pointed at. “This is your right kidney.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrowed slightly as he fixed Will a moment longer, his face slowly moving through forms of astonishment, until he nearly smiled. He struggled to sit on the small gurney. He was breathing heavily by the time he had slid his legs cautiously over the edge, fingers gripped tight to gather the surgical drapes and a blanket around himself. He peered into the bowl. Part of the organ was necrosed near the medula, the whole upper pole was destroyed. Under the kidney, in the pooled blood, the veins and arteries, neatly severed from what he could make out, shone darkly, wrapped in a thin layer of fat, peeled from the skin. “An immeasurably kind thought to keep it, Will,” he said.

Will held his eyes for a moment. “Don’t mention it.”

Hannibal eyed the interveinous drip in his arm, then gestured to the saline bag hanging from the pole. It caught some of the sunlight and seemed crystalline. “The veterinarian performed this?” he asked, as he twisted his left arm around his midsection under the blanket, feeling for the stitches in his back, finding them under the thin gauze.

Will nodded, creating waves of resouding vertigo. “You don’t remember?”

The other man shook his head carefully, mouth parting slightly in pain as he closed the drip and pulled the needle from his arm. “I only remember you,” Hannibal said. “Was I unconscious?”

“No. You talked,” Will said. “A mix of Lithuanian and French.” He tightened the oversized sweater on his chest, but the cold came from inside. “Who were you talking to?”

Testing the ground with his naked feet, Hannibal managed to stand up, legs not shaking, but rigid as glass. “I was home,” he said. “But the rooms had shifted, the corridors tangled, the roof was invisible. The solidity of memory became lumps of liquid.” The words came out of his mouth broken, lacking rhythm. With careful steps, he made his way to Will. His skin was gray in the barely lit room, nearly blue. The mist of pain never leaving his face, he settled down in a chair beside Will’s.

“What are you doing?” Will asked.

It took a moment for Hannibal to focus on Will’s face. His gaze searched his neck, his hair, sticky with seawater and sweat still. A few grains of sand on Will’s temple. His hands twitched where they held the blanket’s coarse wool. “Your stitches,” he explained. “He did them as well?”

“She. Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

Will paused. “We’re not killing her.”

Hannibal’s eyes dragged up from the stitches in Will’s cheek. “I had not planned to.” He lifted a hand near Will’s forehead and took a tangled lace of seaweed from his hair, above the temple.

“She’s upstairs,” Will said.

A lamp was on in the corner. The room had grown to be somewhat of a mess now. Medical drapes covered in blood were in a heap in a trashcan. Open drawers, like mouths of dark. A few empty IV bags on the side. “Does your thigh hurt?”

Will shook his head and Hannibal’s hand brushed by the bloodied pants and went to his shoulder, stretching the collar down to peek at the stitches. The cut was two inches long. Hannibal suspected the blade had indented the collarbone, even if no fracture was obvious. He inspected the swelling under the pink, torn skin. “Did you ever see plays as a child?” he asked.

“Sometimes, I’d see shows. Especially around Christmas,” Will said. “In revival tents and churches.”

Pulling away, Hannibal reached for the first shelf near the operating table, grasping a box of alcohol swabs. Will had never seen his hands shaking, not really. It was strange, as was his gaping mouth searching for uncertain air with every breath. “Was your father religious before or after your mother left?”

Will quirked his eyebrows. “Never. Free food,” he explained. It was hard to remember exactly what his father’s face looked like. But he did remember his hands. When he had shown Walter how to position his fingers around the hold of the fishing rod, Will had noticed his own hands were exactly the same as his father’s old ones, sort of dry, wrinkled around the knuckles.

Beads of sweat formed on Hannibal’s forehead, spots a little darker on his paler skin. The wound on Will’s shoulder had been efficiently cleaned, forming a pinkish oval among the rest of the flesh grayed with traces of blood. “When I was 5, my parents took me to the theater in Vilnius to see a rendering of Faust. The night of Walpurgis,” he said.

“The flying witches, the dancing fairies and the flesh-eating demons?”

Smiling finely, Hannibal began to drag the swab across Will’s shoulder, around the injury, careful not to touch the raw flesh. Little by little, he made the patch of clean skin larger. “Everything I saw that night, I believed to be real. The memory of my disappointment when I found out that they were not monsters, fairies and kings is one of the most vivid ones I possess.”

“Illusions are fragile,” Will said. “You just need to do slightly less than a person, and you have a dream.”

Hannibal’s eyes stayed on his work. He cleaned as far as the stretch of the sweater allowed. “Are you disappointed?”

“I’ve always known you were flesh and blood,” Will said. “You can’t kill a dream. You just have to wake up.”

“I didn’t mean flesh and blood,” Hannibal breathed. He tore open a new swab and brought it to Will’s cheek. The veterinarian had shaved the skin, but some hair would grow in the edge of the wound, inevitably.

Throat tightening, Will let Hannibal clean his cheek. His eyes tingled from the alcohol. “I know what you meant.”

Stilling, Hannibal lifted his eyes to meet Will’s and found them turned toward the small window, in the corner. Evening was coming. At this time, yesterday, they saw dusk arrive over the trees near the house by the bluff. “I suggest you use the couch. Rest your shoulder.”

Will’s cheek and shoulder felt cold against the air, strangely dry. The sea had left salt and dust on them, like the earth of a burial. Behind him, Hannibal’s legs seemed less steady than before as the man rose to his feet. He peered over the bowl that held his kidney for a moment, Will’s eyes on him. He put it in the nearby refrigerator, setting it atop the medicine bottles.

 

* * *

 

_Clarice Starling was a good five years older than most of them, who were just freshly out of law school. She enjoyed the track runs in the forest, the shooting competitions, the classes, the labs. It kept her from thinking. Jack Crawford was a respected instructor, silently admired, sometimes feared. He used authority to create distance and distance to enforce authority._

_They had put their research papers down on his desk. She was packing her laptop in her bag when he called her out. “Starling. Clarice,” he read from her paper’s title page._

_“Sir.”  
_

_He was frowning and lifted the paper up to his nose. “Your paper smells like rosemary.”_

_Clarice froze. She took her right hand from her pocket and raised it to her nose reflexively. And she remembered the sprig of rosemary she had plucked from their plant this morning. “I… I have some in the kitchen.”_

_“A rosemary plant?”_

_“Yes,” she said. Crawford didn’t seem angry. “It’s green and it smells good. I like it.”_

_“It does smell good,” Jack reflected._

_“Can I go?”_

_Crawford focused on her again, coming back from wherever he was. “Sure.”_

 

* * *

 

The next time Hannibal woke, he searched for clothes. He found some in another room, for employees and staff, where Will had found his own. A sweater and blue scrubs. He put them on slowly, drawing blood from the stitches, his chest a vast emptiness of pain. Yet he felt filled with a wildly beating happiness, nested in his belly and flapping its wings quickly, irremediably.

Going back to the operating room, he found Will in the next room to the right, the one where the animal cages were. He was sitting on the ground, fingers curled into the fine bars of a cage. Inside, there was a dog that resembled one of Will’s, Winston. The same long hair and slim nose, but all black.

The animal whimpered quietly, in pain or in worry. It rubbed its paw over its nose.

“You’ll be fine, boy,” Will told him.

Hannibal discarded what he was about to say and went back to the operating room.

 

* * *

 

Curled between the wall farthest from the door and her bedside table, Nour Ayesh realized she had finally fallen asleep when she woke up, startled by the three soft knocks on the door.

“I do not mean to disturb,” a voice she hadn’t yet heard came through the door. “But my wound requires a drain. Did you avoid putting one in in the hope that I would die?” A pause, during which Nour closed her eyes and breathed out slowly.

She sat on the edge of her bed, searching the room around her for a weapon. There were chairs, textbooks, a nail file in her purse. The bat was still downstairs. “Your friend was in a lot of pain,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t do it.”

“Would you be opposed to doing it now?”

She clutched the heaviest book she found that she could hold with one hand. “You’re going to kill me. Why are you so polite?”

His voice was raspier now. “No reason not too,” he said. “Whatever your decision, do make it quickly.”

Nour’s hands went to the chair propped against the doorknob and stilled there for a time. She heard the man’s breathing on the other side of the door’s wood panelling. She wondered how he could have climbed the stairs at all. Her bedside clock said it was nearly midnight. The Terrier and the red cat downstairs needed their insulin drips adjusted. She would have to leave the room eventually. Everyone here knew that.

Tears welled in her eyes. She moved the chair out of the way and unlocked the door.

 


	9. 9.

Out of the car, Clarice took a moment to stretch her legs. She was hitching for a run. She had skipped it this morning and she didn’t know when Jack would want to start with the interview tomorrow. Prurnell had asked her to be there with the BAU staff for the identification of Dolarhyde’s body. It was at ten. She had to meet up before that with her supervisor to be excused for the next coming weeks.

Jack came out of his car. The driver, much younger than Clarice, seemed terrified. The news of Jack’s fall from grace must have reached everyone by now. It had not lessened his reputation for authority, only given it another edge. “Starling,” Jack called out. “My office, if you would.”

She nodded and followed him wordlessly. They stepped inside quickly. A nasty wind had risen, as if they had brought it back with them from the coast. Clouds were assembling. It was just cold enough. The perfect running weather, with the occasional splash of coolness from a frozen droplet on her face.

She declined the seat Jack offered her. His office hadn’t changed, but it reminded her that he did seem older, run down. “I want you to know what it is you’re investigating,” he said. “I know you’re familiar with the Lecter dossier,” he said.

“I could probably recite it from memory.”

“How many murders are there?”

“Thirteen, for certain,” she began to list. “Twelve attributed through forensics, DNA proofs or a direct witness. One by confession. Four wounded at Muskrat Farm, one of which subsequently died. Four more bodies in Europe. Interpol opposed the transfer of the cases when Lecter came forward with his insanity defense. A hypothetical list of 80 other victims was put together based on localization and MO. But they remained theoretical-...”

“Wrong,” Jack interrupted her.

She frowned at the admonition and her mind returned to the constant setbacks, the virile dominance, the unspoken violence. She stiffened, because she could take it. “They weren’t used in the trial. Would’ve weakened the State Attorney’s case. Too much of a stretch.”

“And thirteen were plenty enough for the death penalty,” Jack said. He had taken off his coat and had started to unpile the file boxes that stood, ordered and clean, on shelves in a corner. File names on each of them, except one, the last one, that he brought to his desk. He removed the cardboard lid and Clarice peered inside.

“What is it?”

“Hannibal Lecter. In all his glory.”

Clarice ran her finger on the files’ edges. “How many are there?”

“Will started with the 80 we’d pulled, added the first 8 ripper victims, and narrowed it down from there. He reached 41, total, from 1994 to 2013,” Jack explained. “Lecter confirmed 39.”

“Confirmed?”

“Yes. Will showed it to him.” Jack took his eyes down. “He was using it to gain his trust.”

“Did he?”

“Gain his trust? No one could tell. Will probably couldn’t either.”

She looked in between the open files, her eyes found images of a severed hand, placed on a wooden chair in what seemed like a schoolyard, fingers extended in rigor mortis, as if waving. “What about the two that Lecter unprofiled?”

“We never got a chance to talk about it before the trial. After that, Will didn’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t believe him?”

Jack closed his eyes to think. “I think he didn’t want to think about it. And maybe that was the right choice.” He closed the box and pushed it toward her. “They’ll scoop my office, if not tomorrow, then not too long after.”

“I asked for Friday,” she confirmed. She had made the phone call on the beach, smoke in her nose, debris around her.

Looking at his surroundings, Jack seemed to have the impression that he would never see them the same way again. “You want to take these in an official or unofficial capacity?”

Clarice picked the box up. “Unofficial, for now.”

“Careful,” Jack said. “There are no copies of some of them.”

The box was heavy. Thinking of the images in the box, lifeless, trapped in the files, she felt the same pang of treacherous happiness as ever. Knowing that she could hold crime so close, yet always maintain it at arm’s length, where it couldn’t reach her.

 

* * *

 

_Will placed the box of files on the ground and knocked on the door softly. Hannibal welcomed him with a fine smile. Inside, the lights were dimmed. Darkness came in shrouds. The upper level where Will had escaped before was only a ring of black above their heads. Hannibal wasn’t wearing his suit jacket. In the dim light from the fire, Will could not tell if his shirt was a pale gray, blue or purple. He smoothed the right sleeve of his own dark blue shirt absentmindedly._

_Focusing on Will’s face, above the brow, where the thoughts slept, then moving beyond him, Hannibal’s eyes stopped on the cardboard box at Will's feet, the dull color, the three bold letters on the sides and the smaller words, saying the contents were confidential. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had the opportunity to discuss work from the FBI,” he noted._

_“It’s not work,” Will said. He carried the box inside and placed it on Hannibal's desk, not far from the fire’s gleam. “It is an offering of sort.” Will lifted the files out of the box and placed them in piles._

_“A gift. In exchange for what?”_

_“We exchange continually, each of our steps leading us back to each other. I haven’t found it in me to keep track of all of it,” Will said._

_“Neither have I,” Hannibal said, eyes on the beige files. All of them were official FBI casefiles, some of them thicker than others, most of them bearing lettering on the top, with the victim's family name in capitals._

_Will took a step back. Not far behind him, the fireplace bathed his legs in warmth. Facing him, Hannibal stayed on his side of the desk. “The Chesapeake Ripper,” Will said, embracing the spread out files with a movement of his hand._

_The look on Hannibal’s face shifted and became one of more open curiosity. Nonetheless, he didn't move and frowned lightly, his eyes on Will and not on the files before him anymore. “The Chesapeake Ripper belongs to another world, an ancient state of things. Are you certain he is still relevant?”_

_“I thought you could be interested in seeing the complete works assembled.”_

_“How many victims have you counted?”_

_“41, roughly, from 1994 to this year. Sounds accurate?”_

_Hannibal cocked his head, brushing his thumb against a file, opening it slightly to see traces of blood splatters on the first bright picture inside. “Roughly?”_

_Will took two files from the left pile. “These two are similar but different. A proximity in wounds and process, but the emotion is raw, more unrefined than usual. Angry, although methodical.”_

_Circling the desk, Hannibal peered over the closed files then opened them up, slowly, like he would unwrap a package, the content precious or unknown. In both cases, one from 1998, one from 2000, the head had been severed from the body and not found. It was not decapitation as much as surgical removal. The skin had been peeled, as slight brushes of hematomas underneath showed. Then the fascia had been carved out. A clear picture stood in Hannibal's mind, of the victims held in a sitting position, head in a vice grip._

_“Conscious when they died?” he asked._

_“As per the pattern.”_

_Victims, positioned sitting up, conscious, most likely aware, as the skin was peeled from their neck, the muscles detached, then the flesh carved out to expose the inner workings of the neck: vertebras, hidden, tiny at the back, behind the jungle of the dark, thick arteries, the trachea and oesophagus, pulsating in paler pink... A nice image, the terror of understanding, especially if done under anaesthesia, rising in the eyes of the paralyzed victims._

_Hannibal flipped the picture of the neck to the next one, showing the 1998 victim’s chest. The ribcage had been opened, brutally, from the bottom, letting organs out, pooled onto the man’s lap. The 2000 victim’s ribcage was intact. She had been bled from the aorta in her left thigh, but not disposed properly for the blood to vacate her entire body. Some of it had pooled in the ankle and calf, most likely at the end of the exsanguination process, with the victim lying down._

_“More different than similar,” Hannibal said. Fingers following the line of the incision below the last rib, he brushed the picture’s satiny surface. “The incision is precise, possibly surgical, but the opening of the ribs was clumsy.”_

_“He started with the bottom ribs. The organs descended, unsupported,” Will said. “Created this hemorrhage here.” There was still a shake, a trembling of sort, he felt whenever he looked at the pictures, that he couldn’t identify, that didn’t match the emotion the Ripper tried to convey. At some point, while deliberating, Will wasn’t sure if these two victims were meant to convey anything at all. He had thought that he was so close to Hannibal Lecter now, perhaps he could not see or feel clearly and expected clearer emotions, because from so near, all was so bright. Not that most of these cases were typical of the Chesapeake Ripper: organs consistently removed, sometimes with several body parts, yes, but no staging, bodies abandoned, not displayed but made to look like any other murder. Only a faint afterglow – of care, enjoyment, fastidiousness – gave it away._

_“If only to avoid the coloration of blood in the skin, it is best done in a horizontal position.” From the corner of his eye, he could see Will, absorbed in the pictures before him, recollecting again, halfway between here and another place. “The similarity is striking,” he conceded. “Not done in passing, but on purpose. Another admirer in your opinion? Or a coincidence?”_

_“Murder is too specific a gesture for coincidences.”_

_“Which leaves admiration.” Hannibal lifted one of the pictures of the second decapitation to inspect it in the firelight. “Or flattery.”_

_“Or threat,” Will said. “This admirer knows the Ripper’s daily works, not the flamboyant pieces. He knows where he lives, where he sleeps. Where he eats.”_

_Will searched Hannibal’s face for traces of doubt, or recognition. Nothing showed, save for a mitigated interest, but soon, Hannibal’s focus was back on him, enveloping, nearly fond. “Did you do this to satisfy your own curiosity?” Hannibal asked._

_“The occasions in life are rare when one can have an idea of someone else that’s as complete as possible,” Will said._

_Having slowly slid the papers and pictures back in the 2000 file, Hannibal put it atop the older one and lightly pushed them to the side with his fingertips, then straightened the two remaining piles, aligning edges. “Those are original files. How did you proceed?”_

_“Jack Crawford found traces of all unsolved murders in probable locations. This was over 90 files. Given that I know you, I narrowed it down to those.”_

_“How?”_

_Moving back to the main pile of cases, Will pulled two x-rays from two files. One was from Franklyn Froideveaux’s vertebral fracture. The other one was from a Ripper victim, the first of the Miriam Lass sounder, whose neck was also fractured. He superimposed them in front of the fire. Hannibal leaned forward and saw what Will had seen: the exact same fracture in the neck, a thin streak of dark against the bone, as precise as a brush stroke. Hannibal bowed his head slightly, radiating._

_“Is this part of Jack's plan to catch the Ripper?” Hannibal asked, after contemplating the pictures for a moment._

_Will gave a slight shrug. He didn't know if Jack understood how far he needed to go. “He wants me to use it to gain your trust,” he said._

_Hannibal cocked his head. Will’s eyes did not leave him. His were lost in the glassy beige of the files, as Will fitted the x-rays back in their case files. “And there you are placing the entrusted object in the middle of the room, exposed along with your bare intent.”_

_“I thought you should see it with your own eyes.”_

_“The Chesapeake Ripper is now expurged from both of us and stands on his own ground. No longer a killer, but a seal to a pact.” Hannibal had opened the top file, recognizing a victim from almost twenty years ago. The dark green foliage where he had placed the body came out as a near indigo blue on the polaroid shot. He had left her body on its back, eyes open to the sky, tongueless mouth shut. “What of the admirer?”_

_Will shrugged. Insofar as he suspected these cases not to be Hannibal's doing, he had hoped for a clue. Recognition, pride, hauteur. But there was nothing. “He left no traces, just as the Ripper. The cases are cold now. All that can be done is to wait for him to manifest again.”_

_“The cut at the neck is clean. He detached the skin, muscles and fascias one layer at a time before he severed the arteries and vertebras. It’s sad to see good work stay unclaimed, locked in a basement storage room,” Hannibal said, placing the files back in the box._

_“Jack could want to bundle them right in. Pass them as the Ripper’s work.”_

_“Would you support it?”_

_Will frowned. “Why contribute to a forgery, when I see the reality.”_

_“Our wretched world has no reality, only rows of doors that lead to nightmares.” Hannibal fit the cover back in place and ran a knuckle along the smooth edge of the box. “Does Jack hope to box me in as well?”_

_“At this point, he has something more radical in mind,” Will said. “One day, when we close our eyes, all we will see will be walls of dreams.”_

 

* * *

 

Dr. Ayesh was leaning over Hannibal’s prone form, eyes on the wound she had partly reopened, when Will woke up. First, she had cut three stitches, daubed some blood. Now the drain. She reached for the plastic tube and the pale blue plastic bottle that would collect liquids. Lecter was lying on his stomach, rigid, his skin still pasty and cold, but his pulse steadier. His head pillowed on his crossed forearms, he watched the news on the small television screen in the corner.

“No Jack at the press conference,” he observed, seeing Will was awake.

Holding his slinged right arm against his chest, lips pursing in pain, Will sat up. “'He won’t make it to compassionate leave this time.”

“Sad for Jack.” Hannibal did not stiffen as Ayesh pushed the drain in place, where the tissue was the most swollen.

On the television screen, Kade Prurnell spoke, determined and stern, in front of a screen that displayed pictures of Will and Hannibal in a corner, and above it a view of Hannibal’s house on the cliff, with the yellow lines and the FBI personnel investigating. It seemed peaceful. Will’s picture was the latest shot Freddie Lounds had snapped for Tattlecrime. Chilton was cut out of the frame.

Dr. Ayesh sutured the wound around the drain, taped it down onto the skin. “Thank you. We must apologize again for inconveniencing you,” Hannibal said, sitting up arduously. He took her phone from the shelf where Will had put it and handed it to her. “Please unlock it and write down your bank account number.”

Ayesh looked at him for a time.

“I suppose Will has assured you he wouldn’t hurt the animals,” Hannibal said. In his extended hand, the cradled phone gave off a clear, white light. It traced the outlines of his jaw and brow, hollowed his eyes. Ayesh nodded again. Hannibal stared up at her. “It is true. He wouldn’t. But I could.”

Her lips drew a faint smile of despair. She took the phone and typed slowly, then gave it back. “You...” she said. “You eat people, right?”

“I have not done so in a while now,” Hannibal said. “But broadly speaking, yes.”

“He used to serve them to others,” Will said.

Ayesh leaned against the wall, slid down against it and sat on the ground, tired, scared. Will knew that. The shivers that never really left, like the fear, running underneath like a secret river, underground. But her voice was steady when she asked: “Why would you do that?”

“The normal reaction is usually disgust and horror,” Will noted. “Spontaneous repulsion. Shock.”

“I’m vegan. All meat eating is murder. I supposed I’m used to the sentiment.”

“Disgust and horror are strong emotions,” Will said. “Being used to it usually means it’s been replaced by something else.”

“You think it’s hypocrisy?”

“Of course not,” Hannibal answered. “A choice of diet conveys a great meaning. Meals are social events, meant to be prepared, displayed and shared. We expose the ways in which we survive, every day.”

“I just don’t see them as different from me. We shouldn’t eat our own.”

“Glad to see we agree. I do not eat my own kind either,” Hannibal said.

“Conventional cannibalism derives from ritualistic eating. It symbolizes possession,” Will said. “But combined with other forms of mental illness, it’s often a means of distinction, an elevation. A jest of transcendence, to a degree.”

For a moment, Hannibal’s fingers stopped moving on the small screen. “You must carefully elaborate your protein intake,” he told Dr. Ayesh.

“I make everything I eat.”

“Something we also have in common then.”

Ayesh leaned back against the wall, looking away.

The operating room smelled of blood now along with the mingled odors of pets and cleaning products. The television’s images lit up the small room. “Are you still considering what to do now?” Hannibal asked, quietly. Will nodded. “Will you tell me – when you have made up your mind?”

A minute, defeated smile curled one side of hWill's mouth. “That could defeat the purpose.”

  

* * *

 

When the doors to the elevator opened, Clarice Starling found Agents Price and Zeller inside, arguing about the nature of moo shoo pork. She stepped in between them, placing the box between her feet as protection. “Today. That was not your first crime scene was it?” Zeller asked her.

“No. I consulted on a case.” She swallowed. “Last summer in Nebraska.” The first thing that came to mind was the blood, trickling down from the throats. Like ribbons in the white fur. The legs were tied together. They had been bled alive. Two of them were still breathing and the agents nearby were gathered around cofee.

Price nodded enthusiastically. “Oh. Ritual murders, right? Bodies placed in a circle, bent backwards...”

“With scarification in...” Zeller jumped in. “Was it Latin?”

The victims bodies had been there for a few days, not protected from the rain. The smell of flesh was mostly covered by the one of mud, and, most prominently, the one of sheep wool, wet, heavy, dying. “It was a middle English dialect. Probably quoted directly from a Middle Age treatise.”

“Did you catch him?”

But she couldn’t run with the sheep, still alive. Barely moving. Pulse beating in their throats. She had asked and had been told a vet was on their way. “I just consulted. But there was a confession some times after I left,” she said. So she had just waited, watching the sheep dying, terrified eyes attached to the sky. Where could she have run with those anyhow. And she wasn’t a child anymore. She couldn’t stop these things. “I’ll need to speak with both of you.” She took the box back in her arms and held against her chest like protection.

“About what?” Zeller said. “We don’t even know if we’re still assigned to this case.”

The doors opened. She was going to her car, parked in the nearby street. They went down to the basement, with the assigned parking places. “Your assignments are still under Jack Crawford’s authority. I’m the internal investigator.”

Price frowned. “About Hannibal Lecter’s escape?”

“About Jack Crawford’s involvement in the Lecter case. Is tomorrow alright?”

Both men nodded and wished her good night. Snow had intensified outside. Flakes fell on her face and hid the tracks of the tears.


	10. 10.

_Holding his tie to his stomach, Jack Crawford sat down. “No lawyer?”_

_“I know the law.”_

_“You look like you think you know everything, yes.”_

_Ardell Mapp pursed his lips. “You can’t keep me here forever because I sent a request for a visit at a public institution.”_

_“You asked to see Hannibal Lecter,” Jack clarified, eyebrows as high as the stars._

_“Do you check out all those who do?”_

_The FBI Agent took the file from his lap and placed it down on the table. “Actually, we do,” he said. “But we only do personal interviews for those who’ve spent time in a mental institution.”_

_“I was a minor.”_

_“Changes nothing. What do you want with Lecter?”_

_Ardell took a hand to his neck, pressed down on the muscles there. They had kept him waiting for two hours before he had been informed that he would have to wait a while longer. “I wanted to ask his permission.”_

_“For what?”_

_“Starting a website dedicated to him and the discourse surrounding his case, medical, political or otherwise.”_

_“What purpose would that serve?”_

_“Provide a place of discussion, unwatched and unmonitored, for those who are not satisfied with the usual media coverage.”_

_Jack cocked an eyebrow, smiled to show teeth. “There’s nothing wrong with Lecter’s media coverage.”_

_“It’s a bunch of bullshit.”_

_“The fact that it’s bullshit doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with it,” Jack said, conceding the point with a wave of his finger. “You're aware this website will attract a particular fauna?”_

_Repressing a sigh, Ardell paused, picking words carefully. “It’s demeaning to use a term reserved for animals and their relation to a closed ecosystem to refer to persons who share a subject of interest.”_

_“I find it accurate,” Jack said, getting to his feet, leaving the file on the metallic table. They hadn’t chained Ardell to it, but the hook for the shackles was there, if empty. “You’re the same species, you build the same environment for yourselves and thrive in it.” He paced the room for a time, his shoes the only noise with the faint buzzing of the neon above. “You thought of a name?”_

_“I’m not discussing that with you.”_

_“The Hannibal Lecter Fan Club sounds about right?”_

_“So you do monitor my credit card.” It wasn’t as much his stay in the hospital, Ardell thought, that pissed them the most, but his application to the FBI training program. They had rejected him alright, but they had attracted him and it must worry them. “It’s the domain name.”_

_“Were you really expecting an answer from Lecter? Think he’d have said yes?”_

_“Doesn’t matter now. I won’t see him.”_

_Crawford stopped near the one-way mirror. “So, I trust you’ll reconsider._

_Ardell shook his head slowly. “This is good for you, Agent Crawford,” he urged. “Keeps the fauna caged in one place. You can see what people are up to. Right?”_

_The other man’s eyes didn’t leave him. Ardell knew he was right. He had already written down the text for the security page advising visitors of the site to hide their traces. Jack Crawford walked back to the table, fingers brushing against the file. “What are you taking for your psychotic anxious depression?”_

_“Nothing. Psychosis was an episode.”_

_“Still symptomatic?”_

_Ardell chewed on his lower lip, then crossed his hands on the table. “The latest issue of the DSM says that, as a guideline, grief should not be excluded to diagnose major depressive episodes. It can be considered pathological if the inability to function due to feelings of immeasurable sadness persist over two weeks after the death of a loved one. Still symptomatic, Agent Crawford?” The Agent had sat back down, smoldering. “Don’t give me that look. Your wife’s obituary was public. Still is.”_

_Jack nodded and leaned forward, hands flat on the table so that they framed Ardell’s smaller, paler ones. “People usually don’t mention that because they’re afraid I’ll smash them to pieces.”_

_The room fell back into its vague, far-away buzz. Ardell pulled his hands from the table and leaned back into his seat. “Backing off,” he said._

_Jack looked at him long enough to let the weight of his authority settle in. “You’re spending the night here.”_

 

* * *

 

It was still extremely difficult to bend down. The pain was only a cloud in his back between the shoulders, in his chest with some nails of it in his legs, but the weakness was intense. The hard ridge of the stitches, the gauze and the protruding drain sometimes rasped against the soft inside of the gray sweater.

Hannibal retrieved his kidney from the refrigerator. The organ seemed smaller than the ones he had taken from others, but only by a smidge. It was the same dark hue, the same texture, soft and dense. With a scalpel, he severed the necrotic lobe, then removed the veins and the nerves that were tangled on the underside, mixed with blood.

He transferred the kidney on a tray and began by cutting thin slices. Ideally it should be ground, especially for an animal this size, but he would have to settle for chopping it in smaller parts. The scalpel moved swiftly in his hands, cutting through the flesh like it was air. During the past years, his fingers had grown used to pressing tighter, apply more strength and slice more cautiously, since he had been allowed to prepare food only with plastic cutlery.

In the cages nearby, animals watched him with interest.

He left some blood along with the offal pieces, transferred them to a small white ceramic animal bowl and went to the cage he had chosen. It housed the black dog that had reminded Will of his own. Hannibal opened the cage and placed the plate down. The dog sniffed it for some time, then closed its teeth sharply on a first piece, a deep growl in its chest. It chewed fiercely on the rest.

By the moment Hannibal was putting the remaining parts of the organ in the biological trash, the dog was licking the blood at the bottom of the dish. And just like that, it was gone. There was some distant aloofness, a short twist in Hannibal's gut at the thought that he had not shared the meal himself.

He found Dr. Ayesh in the adjacent room, the pharmacy. “Are the animals fed?”

There was no apparent fear for now, just a tension in the upper body. “I still need to prepare doses for Aleen and Robin.”

Hannibal closed the door behind him noiselessly. “If you leave instructions, I will administer them.”

The veterinarian stepped back, a strange pallor coming to her skin. Hannibal watched it start around her eyes and spread down to her cheeks, her neck. She blinked a few times and seemed to find resolve for something. “They had their teeth cleaned. It’s a bit of post-anesthesia, tranquilizers and corticosteroids for inflammation,” she said, motioning to the charts, needles and vials stacked in plastic boxes against the wall. “What’s happening?”

“I believe it would be appropriate to discuss death.”

“Death of animals?”

“Among others,” Hannibal said, stepping forward every time Dr. Ayesh stepped back, until she hit the back wall, the rising sun showing in its square window above her head. “Your conviction that you inflict less suffering in the world by consuming no animals, does it reassure you?”

“I'm just trying to live with myself.”

“The analogy isn’t ill-founded. We are mostly animals, except for rare, luminous moments, which we often cannot share with anyone.”

She had lined her back with the wall. He stayed four feet from her for now. “Is that why you eat people? To get these moments from them?”

Hannibal shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. She didn’t know what he wanted to see there. He seemed to be waiting for something. “They are not found in the flesh and the blood,” he said. He looked away, eyes falling to the trace of Will’s bloody fingers on a wall nearby. “Thank you, for what you have done.”

“Stop thanking me. It makes me think you’re going to kill me.”

“Do you think animals fear death as humans do?”

“They do.” Vivid fear came back on Dr. Ayesh’s face. “And it doesn’t even matter: we know what death is. We shouldn’t inflict it on those who don’t understand it.”

The man cocked his head on the side. He extended his right arm, testing the reach with a wince. “In your understanding, is it preferable to kill a human being?”

“It would be speaking the same language. There’s no reason to kill an animal, ever. They can’t do anything wrong.” Nour’s eyes burned. A tear slid down her face and landed on her sweater. In the cage near her, a black cat looked at it curiously. “Is it going to hurt?”

“Are you afraid?”

“Not... not really. I’m...”

Lecter took two nitrile gloves from a box and put them on slowly, balling one fist and the other experimentally. “Describe.”

In the next room, the animals slept in their cages, nearly silent. “I’ll miss them. I’m worried. People are cruel and stupid.”

“Your emotions won’t survive you. They will fade when nerve conduction stops. A light clicking off in universal indifference. You will not miss anything,” he said. “I will remember.”

 

* * *

 

_When she woke up, the first thing she noticed was that she could recall fewer things than before. She felt diminished. She was locked in a lightless place._

_After hours, she managed to make out the walls, blurred, the ceiling, impossible. Then she found the dress, right before her, laid out. And after that, the note beside the dress._

_It took her a long time to read it. She held it close to her face. There was not enough light. Like she had been renounced, redundant, and forgotten, and starved. God, she was hungry._

_Eventually, some sun seeped in and she made out words. They read:_ Dear Miriam. This dress is for you. It symbolizes a special occasion, a renaissance of a sort. Please do wear it. You should eat this note.

_The dress was white silk, with pale gold trimmings in the back and puffed sleeves of crêpe._

_Slowly, she broke the piece of paper in small pieces. Then she began to eat them, one at a time._

* * *

 

_He kept running. Through the trees, he made out the vast bird flock, meshing with the laced branches, tiny wings strong in the wind. They were always faster than him and he was running out of breath. He jumped over a thorny bush and fell ankle-deep in a small pond of water. He stopped to look down at his feet in the muddied waters and found a little house, lit from the inside, tiny, in the middle of a field, near a tree, all minuscule and immersed in the clouded waters, soon hidden behind a thick veil of dark earth in suspension._

“Will,” Hannibal said, from above. Will opened his eyes. Standing beside the couch, Hannibal was rolling the cuffs of a gray sweatshirt up so they were fit at the wrists. “Time to go.”

He gripped the couch’s back to get up, slowly, pain flushing back into his body like it was ticking boxes until he was entirely flooded. Around him, the house was silent. No steps, no lit lights, the only noises were the ones of them breathing, save for a dog, whimpering softly in the next room. On the counter, by the cash, Hannibal calmly disassembled Dr. Ayesh’s phone. In the ambient shine of the receding moon, the metallic pieces traced patterns on the counter. The tool had lost its shape, as if it had never been whole.

It was something in the fall of Hannibal’s shoulders, in the slight shake of his wrists and the sweat still visible on one temple, near the falling hair. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Nour Ayesh’s eyes searched for his but they were blind, only moving constrictedly in their orbits. “We weren’t supposed to kill her,” Will said.

Hannibal’s eyes were lost in the maze of pieces before him. He sounded a little out of breath when he spoke. “It was best to leave her with a message.”

“With a message or as a message?”

“Both.”

The more time Will spent standing, the more the pain turned in a distant cold. The painkillers tried to keep it away from him. “There’s no such thing as a deal with the devil. There’s just pressure,” he reflected.

“Pressure, if applied to liquids, does not crush but creates energy,” Hannibal said. “And Mephistopheles only offered Faust what he desired.”

“Faust had no idea what he wanted,” Will said. “Mephisto knew that.”

He imagined Hannibal’s arm _around Nour Ayesh’s throat and her eyes were not letting go of his, all along. Nor were Hannibal’s, but Will extended his hands and held Nour’s through it, her fear washing through him as she struggled and found nothing to hold on._ The next thought came foggily. Necessity. What to do. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Baltimore,” Hannibal said. “The drain in my wound needs changing for the next 48 hours. I cannot do it myself and you’re in no state to.”

“Still no alert, then,” Will said. “The FBI is determined to forget us. And to make us forgotten.”

Hannibal adjusted the loose sweater around himself. “Is it a comforting thought?”

“Comfort,” Will sighed. “Has always seemed like something I looked in onto from the outside. Its mechanism is familiar. Organically, I couldn’t tell.”

“You seemed peaceful while you slept. Undisturbed, unrevealed.”

Will turned away. “This isn’t the first time you’ve watched me sleep.”

“No.” Hannibal said, face somewhat softer than the one Will’s memory held. The painkillers maybe, even if the tensed muscles in the other man’s arms seemed to let on that they had diminished in effect. “And on all these occasions, you were harmed or recovering, wounded yet triumphant.”

 _A vague image of blinds closing over sunrays in a window too tall to be one from Wolf Trap, the prick of a needle in his arm that felt kind, precious, unphysical and Hannibal’s voice, always. The numbness and pain stopped the memories_ from blooming. “Harmed by you. Directly or indirectly.”

For a moment, Hannibal stood still, apparently contemplating the room around them. The couch with Will’s hair, some skin fragments and sweat on it. The surgical equipment, cleaned, but never thoroughly enough, where they would find his blood. The plate with traces of his kidney, licked clean in the other room. “Always recovering,” he said, at last, motioning for Will to leave first.

In the backroom, where he had broken in, Will took the baseball bat from where Ayesh had placed it down, in a corner. His fingers’ grip was loose around it. It felt surprisingly light, with a surge of weight near the larger end. The knife had not left his pocket.

Outside, the chill of the air drew a breath out of him. He pulled the sweater tighter around himself and slid down into the cold seat on the passenger’s side.

Hannibal sat down carefully and clasped his hands on the wheel, setting each finger down in turn to still them. Will thought that they should have taken more IV fluids with them, as a coolness spread in his chest. But he glanced outside at the house. Above the entrance, there was a purple and green neon sign, tracing the shapes of two intertwined animals, dog and cat. The opaque windows, the cries of the animals inside, Nour Ayesh’s body, maybe not displayed. All stared back at him.

On the porch, a shape changed, drawing Will’s eyes. A bird had landed near the window. Will recognized it immediately. It was small, black, not a forest bird, nor a coastal bird. A bird made to hide in the underbrush, all dark feathers and a cruel angled beak.

The car started, its headlights solitary into the woods. They left and the clinic was lost in the darkness, just a patch of wood, holding flesh and blood, nested among the trees, pines, bushes.

There was no one in sight for a while, then they drove among some rare cars, more and more as they came closer to the city. Will didn’t take his eyes up, thinking that people would see him if he saw them. His eyes were attached to the graying asphalt in the dawn, where rocks shone like shards. _Soon, the shards became scattered pieces of mirror. Then Nour Ayesh was on the operating table in Hannibal’s place, eyes closed. In the dark corridors of the clinic, Dolarhyde roamed._

“The clinic will open again in less than twenty-four hours. The animals will be looked after.”

Will nodded and touched his forehead to the window of the car. It was cool. Enough to burn through to his brain.


	11. 11.

 

* * *

 

 _Scumble_ (v.) : To glaze a painting with opaque pigments instead of layers of clear, transparent ones to create both haze and luminosity.

 

* * *

 

Their apartment was on the third floor of a brown apartment building. They had lived there since college. Most of the neighbors thought they were a couple. Sitting in the kitchen, by the window, watching coffee brewing, Ardell saw the two agents come in through the small garden on the front lawn. It was not the first time. Coffee was done by the time they knocked.

“Morning Ardell.”

“We have yet to go to the beach together.” He nodded. “Agents Price and Zeller. Mr. Mapp would be nice.”

Zeller peered inside the apartment over Ardell’s shoulder. “Your public forums have been pretty active. I assume the private ones too,” he said.

“If they want a warrant, your web guys should check with my web provider.”

“This is post-9/11 America. We’ll get it.”

“I’m not a terrorist. Neither is Hannibal Lecter, even if you wanted to push it.”

Price frowned, eyed Zeller. “I’d make the argument he does generate terror.”

“I thought the line from your side was ‘he’s dead, let’s close the case before people can look too closely at how he got out in the first place’.”

Ardell retreated in the apartment. The two agents followed, inspecting the three closed doors they found in the corridor. It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to give information. Jack Crawford had contacted him once, to see if Ardell would really comply. It was shortly after he had been held for 48 hours following the request he had placed at the BSHCI.

In the kitchen, he poured himself coffee and wondered if he would see Hannibal Lecter, one day.

“What’s your line?” Zeller asked, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, playing the casual policeman.

Ardell sipped wordlessly. Agents Price and Zeller had seen Lecter, he figured. If not after his incarceration, at least before, while he dangled before the FBI’s nose. “That you wouldn’t be here if your line was solid.”

“You know us feds, we like to be boring and thorough. Making sure no one emulates Lecter,” Price said.

“And if that were the case, making sure said emulator wouldn’t come from the Hannibal Lecter Fan Club. Now how bad would that look,” Price said, cocking his head, twisting a branchlet off the rosemary plant growing by the window.

“It’s an interest page. Freedom of speech-...”

Zeller made an annoyed face. “Yeah. Et cetera.”

“I’m just the host of discussions. I offer a space where freedom of speech is protected and anonymity is guaranteed to share opinions and analysis on the legal and psychiatric aspects of the Hannibal Lecter case. Every time threats of violence were made, explicit or dubious, I reported them to the local police. As is my obligation,” Ardell recited quietly.

“We’re not really talking about threats.”

“More like really sick jokes.”

“So,” Zeller emphasized. “Anyone weird in this specific fauna of yours?”

“Weirder than your usual.”

Looking down at the bottom of his empty coffee cup, Ardell pondered what it would have been like to meet Hannibal Lecter. Even now, he couldn’t even fathom it. It seemed like a far light, near the horizon. “How is he?” he asked.

“What?”

“Tell me how Lecter was. I’ll tell you what I’ve got.”

Zeller huffed. “That’s-…”

“He was nice,” Price said.

Ardell shrugged. “Everyone’s nice.”

“Well. Very nice. Polite.”

“Refined,” Zeller corrected.

“Talked about Brahms, saw you didn’t get it, made a crack about baseball. If you frowned at baseball, shifted back to the way the aorta contracts during cardiac infarct.”

“Kick-ass forensics-wise,” Zeller added. “For reasons retrospectively obvious.”

It wasn’t anything Ardell hadn’t already heard, nothing he could not figure out by himself. It fit. It lingered. He smiled. He reached for a piece of paper and wrote down what he could give them.

“Here you go.”

 

* * *

 

In the car, Zeller examined the note from Ardell Mapp in the graying morning.

“What are they?” Price asked.

“IP adresses,” he mumbled.

It was Price's turn to drive. He adjusted his beige hat on his head, the one that he thought made him look like a brassbound detective. Zeller thought it made him look like a casual panamanian drug lord. “It's totally your turn to check in with Cyber Crimes,” Price said.

“No, you skipped yours.”

“Did not.”

They argued until Zeller caved, bringing with him the promise of a blueberry and cheese danish. He opened his phone and started to review the info on Ardell Mapp. He stopped at his adress. It reminded him of something, something he would have seen recently. He had only checked on Clarice Starling's file this morning. “Wait up.”

 

* * *

 

When she’d returned from her run, Ardell had told her two FBI agents had come. Clarice had shrugged, thought of the case files box, on the floor of her room. But no, Ardell told her, they had only wanted to speak with him. He was barely finished speaking when her phone buzzed quietly, still in its holder on her arm. Jack wanted her in his office before they went to the body identification.

She didn’t have time to wash her hair, ran soap over her skin feeling like she was falling down, took a sip of coffee and left with a growling hunger.

Standing in Jack’s office, she wondered if she felt this hollow because she had slept too little and run on an empty stomach or because of the case files she had started to look through. So much blood, she had thought at first. So many limbs, she had thought then.

She was still thinking when Jack repeated his question. “We’ve known each other since Senior High,” she said. “We agree about what ‘clean’, ‘privacy’ and ‘bills’ mean.”

“He read your article?”

“He proofread it. He thought it was methodological masturbation covering mystical fallacies.”

Agent Zeller was perched on the edge of the desk at the back, looking at his crossed ankles. “He’s a security risk.”

“Not officially,” Clarice said. “We don’t talk about work.”

On Jack’s desk, a coffee was turning cooler. There was steam coming off of it when she had walked in. It had slowly thinned to a line, then disappeared entirely. “Is Prurnell aware of this?” he asked her, unflinching, monolithic, hands crossed.

“If you want to let her know, be my guest,” she assured him. “Maybe I can get out of this.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed at her. “Tired of being in charge?”

She wondered if it would get any easier. It still sounded like she admitted defeat and she knew that it was exactly what she would see in their eyes, the glimmer of victory, a flickering moment of pride, knowing they had survived what she rejected.

Pausing, Jack circled his desk and sat against the front, facing her. “Do we have any reason to think you’d be a liability, Starling?”

“No. None.”

“Jack,” Zeller protested.

“I’ve asked Starling to keep an eye on Mapp for us in the past,” Jack said. “Nothing came back that our IT guys didn’t already know.”

“We got two IP addresses out of him,” Price said. “Are we running it through the channels?”

“Sure. Sing your songs,” Jack nodded. “Reliable stuff?”

“No idea.”

The two agents left. Jack touched his lips to his coffee, frowning. “What was that for?” Clarice asked. Jack had never asked her to report on her roommate. She was in fact pretty certain he had just learned Ardell Mapp and her shared an apartment.

“If it’s going to be just anybody investigating me, I’d prefer it to be you,” he explained. “Unless you object.”

She felt the motions of institutional, impersonal power all over her. So she was authorized to stay. She shook her head and began to head out.

“Clarice,” Jack called out. “Are you leaving because of me?”

She breathed out slowly. Her head spun lightly. She should really eat something. Or get out of here forever before the sickness got her in the brain too. “It didn’t help,” she said.

 

* * *

 

_On Friday mornings, the corridors of the psychiatry faculty offices were mostly silent. Few students had classes at all. Most teachers had private practices on the side and didn’t keep office hours. Alana Bloom stopped in front a window. She could see her reflection, pale, but distinct, against the gray of the buildings outside. Her long braided hair hung on her shoulder, all the way down to her hip. She made sure her scarf was properly arranged and fixed a strand of hair with a pin against her neck._

_It was almost 9. She waited two minutes and knocked on the door to Dr. Lecter’s office at 9 AM sharp. He opened the door to greet her._

_They had exchanged phone messages and e-mails on the subject of her thesis and the research she wanted to pursue under his mentorship. But it was the first time she met him in person. As she recounted her last stay in a clinic for children with weak scores on the autistic scale, she noticed that he was everything she had heard, even the contradictions. He was polite, distant, if friendly, and she understood why some thought it was snobbery. He used precise words, elided less than most, and she saw how it could be taken as mannerism. He was lean, with what seemed to be – he was sitting – proportionally long legs, he was athletic as far as she could tell under the pale blue cashmere of the sweater, or at least enough for a hint of narcissism to show through – she grasped why some had told her he was pretty, and others had said he was self-involved._

_“But first,” he said, “Let’s be done with formalities. If you will give me your application for the Burns grant, I’ll sign it right away.”_

_She handed him the paper and eyed the shelves behind his desk while he skimmed through it. “No pictures?” she noted._

_“Pictures are paradoxical in the professional context. A door open on private life that is only meant as such: a glimpse and not an offer of friendship or proximity,” he said, not interrupting his reading._

_“So you have loved ones, but no pictures?”_

_He looked up. His mouth tightened in a line, then curved slightly again. “I prefer memories to pictures. Vivid, moving, as life itself.” He signed at the bottom of the three pages of the form. “And not for exhibition. Do you always notice absent objects more than present ones?”_

_She exhaled. “When I do, I feel more present to myself, at least by way of contrast,” she said._

_He handed her the paper back. She took it and his face changed, more aged suddenly. She frowned. He wasn’t dressed in wool pants and blue sweater. There were no shelves. His hair was shorter, a strange shade of brown that was almost gray. And he wasn’t smiling at all._

_Alana pulled the paper back to her side of the bars. They were in a Baltimore police station where Hannibal was held awaiting trial. They had secluded him in a cut-off area. She had argued to be allowed here alone, without escort, cameras off. She looked down at the paper she held. It was in Hannibal’s handwriting, with his signature at the bottom. The confession. “As agreed,” he said. “Now, if I may, I would like to bargain.”_

_“I have your confession.”_

_“If you deny my bargain, I will deny its existence.”_

_“What do you want, Hannibal?” Alana reached for her bag to put the paper back inside and she realized she didn’t have it with her. She had the black leather case she used as a student instead. And her clothes weren’t right either. Her long braided hair fell over her shoulder. She was wearing the plaid skirt she liked so much before. And – her fingers moved to her abdomen – the slight swell was gone. Up to this moment, fear had been hanging from the ceiling, hovering above, transparent, like smoke in a sealed room, trying to get out, but circling in the air instead. She breathed it all in in one sharp burst._

_“Drawing material. Access to a list of my books I will provide. A window, if at all possible. A line of sight to the stars at least,” he listed. “The opportunity to cook, from time to time. Under supervision, I’m sure.” He cocked his head. “For you, if you would like.”_

_Her mouth moved of its own accord. Alana felt like the frozen inhabitant underneath. “Transposing your outside life inside closed walls, Hannibal? You expect a long stay?”_

_He smiled then. She couldn’t tell exactly how different the shape of his lips was from the first Hannibal Lecter she could remember. “I hope not,” he said. “But one never knows. I could go insane, all alone.”_

_She clung to the confession still in her hands and crumpled the paper._ She woke up to find her fists closed over the sheets tightly. Her heavy breathing calmed down as she sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, feeling the faint pull in the right one. The strained psoas muscle had never returned to its former elasticity.

Alana eyed the room around her. She checked that Margot was sleeping and moved to her feet, slipping on a robe. In the dark, she searched for the box with the socks in it, but found it only at the bottom of a pile in the corner. She sighed and went out on her naked feet.

She stopped by Morgan’s room, approached the bed, made sure the living, breathing shape of her son was still warm, sometimes trembling with the microscopic motions of peaceful sleep. Then she went downstairs.

There were boxes in the hall, in the large, spiraling staircase and everywhere in the kitchen, some open to get cutlery out for their Chinese take-out dinner. It was so long, she thought, since she hadn’t run from anything. This didn’t feel like moving, or like beginning to live. It felt like hiding under a rock. She opened the refrigerator and stared at the white, grounding light inside. Margot’s steps startled her.

The other woman handed her a pair of wool socks, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She had forgotten a smidge of mascara near her left eye when she had washed her face before bed. Alana licked her thumb and cleaned it. Margot stared at her with those infinite eyes.

“You know I don’t want to talk about it,” Alana said.

“I know.” Margot motioned to one box on the counter. “You want a drink?”

Alana smiled, closed the refrigerator door and they were in some more darkness. “Bad habits.”

Margot pulled the box to her and found the switch light under the cupboards. They gave off a cold, steely glow. “I couldn’t sleep either. This house has new noises,” she explained. She found a Wild Turkey bottle and fetched two tall glasses.

“I thought you’d been here when you were younger,” Alana said.

Margot poured them glasses. “Twenty years ago. I didn’t sleep much either back then.”

Taking a long sip, Alana felt warmer. Her ear caught the light sound of radio chatter outside, reminding her that she shouldn’t feel comfortable.

“You never talk when you have nightmares,” Margot said.

“You do.”

The younger woman looked down at her glass. “Do I still say-…”

“Yeah,” Alana said. The weeks following Mason’s death had been the worst. It seemed as if the air that Margot breathed out was shaped with the letters of his name. It had grown rarer, with time.

“Every time you think you’re done with the butchery, some blood spurts out,” Margot whispered.

“You dealt with your trauma.”

“You dedicated yourself to yours.” Margot ran her hands along her arms, shivering. “How did you do it?”

“I buried it, and whenever I felt like I would drown, I dug deeper, until I hit rock.”

“Now, he’s out of the cave. To get you.”

“Us.”

Margot placed her empty glass down. “Let him try.” She held the bottle up as a question and Alana nodded.

“I should drink your stuff more often,” Alana said, as her wife poured their glasses. 

Her wife touched their noses together. “I’m always there for more stuff.” 

 

* * *

 

Bedelia heard the knock on the door from the kitchen. Something grew in her stomach that was not exactly fear, but not entirely dissimilar either as she made her way to the living room. Fear was not as much a feeling, she had come to think, as a disposition of mind that blurred the frontiers of other drives: curiosity, compunction, outrage. Plain distress would have isolated her, made her shrink and shiver. Her step didn’t shake on her way to the living room. She pushed the curtain out of the way and saw him, sitting on the front steps, holding his side. His back was to the door and his face was turned into the rising sun.

She took her gun before she opened the door. Hannibal turned his head slowly and she froze, gun held in both hands, at the sight of the bruise alongside his neck, the hair clasped on his head and the slump of his torso. “Hello, Bedelia. I do wish we had met again under better circumstances.”

As much as she had before thought that the gun would mar the moments of crystalline truth between them, she now found that her sincerity depended on it. “Time has bruised you, Hannibal. Or were you scorched by the dragon?”

“Luckily I wasn’t the one torched in fire. Have you followed the news, by any chance?”

“Yes. You have survived your own death.”

“To return to you.”

“Because I would care for you.” She noticed the spots of blood in his clothing, trailing along his side and larger in his back on the right. “But freedom is a volatile object.”

“Not as volatile as captivity. We make ourselves captive of the ones of our choosing.”

The more she tested the weight of the words on her tongue, the more comforting they became. “Did you kill Will Graham? Or did he kill himself?”

“Why would you think that?”

“He led me to believe a number of things.”

“These things surprised you.”

“I am certain he has led you to believe a certain number of them as well.” Bedelia didn’t think to turn around to look behind herself. She could not, not while he stared at her, pinned her down, holding her to him. “Is he here?”

“Not right now, no.”

She studied the bruise on the side of his neck. It extended under his shirt. The clothing was unfit on Hannibal, too large, uncommon for him. It made him seem much more broken than when she had found him in her bedroom’s en suite bathroom. “The last time you parted with him, you were also bruised, the flesh bearing the marks of the turmoils within.”

Hannibal took his eyes down. The sun was coming up slowly, the sky reddening near the horizon, over the trees that masked the house on the other side of the street. “Pain is not less real now than it was then. It should rightfully manifest physically, only to remind us of its existence.” Hannibal held out his hand, fingers outstretched. “Please. Your hand.” Bedelia’s eyes were taken by it for a moment, then they drifted off above him. No sign of life in any of the houses around. All was silent, except for whispers of wind and chirping of birds. Maybe she had stopped listening to birds, she thought. Their sounds seemed alien and distorted, as if they complained and cried.

“No, Hannibal.”

“Very well.” He brought his hand down and placed it flat on the rock of the steps he sat on. He started to lean forward, mouth twisting in pain.

The voice was low, but close enough to startle her. “Help him up, Bedelia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late night update, but ao3 wouldn't let me log in this morning and I have yet to dare fanficcing at work. 
> 
> A note on structure: this fic is roughly based (for the 30 or so first chapters, at least) on the exile of Hannibal Barca. After failing to take the city of Rome, Hannibal returned to Africa and was defeated in Zuma in 202 BC. In the aftermath, he fled to Asia (actual Turkey and Syria) and travelled from kingdom to kingdom, offering his services as a general, only to be rebuked, defeated or betrayed every time. 
> 
> x


	12. 12.

Among all of Freddie Lounds’ short stays in prison, this was nowhere near the worst. For the past day hours, she had shared her cell with an Asian young woman who remained completely mute, sitting cross-legged on the bench. Her eyes were closed most of the time. When she opened them, she stared at the small window above their heads. There was a sliver of sun there, crawling across the ceiling.

The FBI’s installations here were comfortable enough. They had taken her phone, but she could keep her pad of paper and pen. She had begun drawing doodles, filling pages and pages with small rounds and squares cinching each other.

At least, they had benches long enough to lie down, she thought.

She was watching the square of sunlight elongate into a rectangle when the door to the room opened. The steps were steady, solid. Officers, heavy boots, uniforms, the dangling of keys. There were others too, muffled. Not boots, but leather shoes.

Beside her, the young Asian woman got up from her seat near the sink and walked to the bars.

The quiet steps approached. Lounds sat up. A tall, slim man in his late sixties stood outside their cell. The young woman smiled when she saw him. From what Freddie could gather, they spoke quickly and quietly in Japanese. He kept at a distance from the bars, but his face was open, riddles curling around his lips and eyes, framing a controlled smile.

“Who are you?” Freddie asked.

The other woman turned around slowly. Her sweater and coat looked like a costume with the stiff pride shaping the hold of her neck and face. “Which one of us?” she asked back. 

“Both, actually.”

“Is it important that you know?”

Freddie snorted. “Is the sky blue?”

The man stepped forward and wrapped a hand around the bars, long fingers gloved in black suede. He seemed familiar, more in bearing than in anything else, but Freddie couldn’t quite place it. “We will soon be out of your hair, Ms. Lounds,” he said. “In the meantime, the officer will bring you a meal. Then formalities will be carried out and Chiyoh and I will leave.”

Freddie’s eyes darted to the young woman. “Chiyoh who?”

The man raised a finger and placed it on his lips in a hush sign.

 

* * *

 

Will had never seen anything else beyond the living room. The short hall after the entranceway door had mirror doors to a wide closet. Bedelia watched him inspect it, shoes and fur and suede coats. He took her gun from her fingers.

“Other guns in the house?” he asked. He was reminded of the few occasions where he had asked that question before, _as a police officer. The lady looked up from where her hands hid her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, her mascara colored the skin in an inky tone, thick and gray. Will stopped the thought in its tracks_ before he couldn’t see her eyes at all.

Bedelia studied Will, delicate, ideas and thoughts flickering behind her eyes. “Another one in my bedroom,” she said, finally. “In the nightstand.”

“Second floor?” 

She blinked slowly. “To your right after the stairs.”

She was still holding Hannibal’s left elbow. He leaned on her to close the thick, metallic door after them.

 

* * *

 

The Y-incision from the autopsy of Dolarhyde’s body met at the bottom with the scar from the abdominal wound. They had closed it, Price had explained, because the bowels would spill out as they...

“Swelled up with gazes until they’d burst,” Clarice filled in.

The cut in the abdomen started a little right of the navel, slightly above it, and was over eleven inches long. The edges were clean. It had been done with Dolarhyde’s own knife, matching the wounds he had inflicted on some of his other victims. The throat was something else. They had inserted a plastic tube in the ruptured trachea to straighten it and prevent the collapse of the neck. He was covered in a sheet up to the waist.

Clarice stood in the back. Jack Crawford paced the room, checking the time on his phone from time to time. The elevator dinged. A black woman with a haze of curled hair around her face walked out. She probed the ground before her with her white cane, but the short man beside her insisted on holding on her elbow.

“Ms. McClane,” Jack greeted her.

She gave a quick smile. “Agent Crawford.”

“Mr. Mettling, I presume? You worked with Dolarhyde?”

“Yeah.” He gestured to the body. “Do I have to get closer?”

“A few steps. Just to make sure you recognize him, then you can both leave.”

“Can I touch him?” the woman asked. Her eyes weren’t red. She seemed a little scared. Clarice had seen her sniff quietly. The thick chemical scent didn’t mask the smell of the bodies stored behind the polished metallic doors to the corpses’ refrigerators on the wall.

“It may not be a good idea,” Jack said.

She nodded. “I know. But I’d like to do it.” The same quick smile, a little nervous now, Clarice understood. “He’s really dead this time, right?”

Jack eyed Clarice, then Zeller and Price. “Okay,” he said, moving back to let McClane step forward.

Her cane searched the floor until it hit the refrigerators on her right. She trailed her fingers on them and held her hand out. It grasped air until it touched the edge of the gurney. Her breath hitched when her fingers touched the cold skin of a forearm. They slid upward slowly, never leaving the skin. Clarice wondered how rigid it must have felt.

Reba’s hand slid to the neck. It brushed by the wound but didn’t stop there. She reached Dolarhyde’s face. His lips, his cheek, then his nose. When her fingertips reached his right eye, she frowned. “You sewed his eyes closed,” she said.

“They would’ve stayed open otherwise,” Jack explained.

“Well,” she started. “He can’t see anything either now.” She pulled her hand back.

“Ms. McClane,” Clarice said. “I’d like to talk with you, if that’s fine. It shouldn’t take long.”

They left the room to the quiet voices of Jack Crawford and Mettling, asking and answering questions to confirm the dead man’s identity.

 

* * *

 

_The blanket Hannibal had wrapped around him felt coarse. His skin was reddened and chafed from sitting outside in the cold. It was a while before he could get up and find clothing to dress. He looked at his mud-covered feet, black and gray as if they had turned to stone. He wondered if there was blood along with the dirt, like there was – he knew, he knew it couldn’t be anything other than blood – on his finger tips, in the creaks of the skin. He put on white socks, rocks and earth clinging to his toes._

_The psychiatrist came back from the kitchen holding a washcloth. He sat beside Will on his bed and took his wrist to clean his hand. Will shook his head. “It’s evidence.”_

_Hannibal’s hand stayed suspended for a moment, then he folded the washcloth in two._

_“You’re avoiding eye contact,” Will said._

_The other man turned slowly and stared at Will. Will met his gaze and held it. “I have to believe there is an explanation for all this, Will,” Hannibal said._

_“You don't know that.”_

_“Does it matter?” Hannibal asked._

_Will blinked a couple of times. His throat felt raw, like if he’d screamed all night._

 

* * *

 

In Bedelia’s shower, Will stood away from the spray, in the warm steam. Standing under it could have undone some stitches, hurt the skin, favor bruising. He could still not use his right arm. His chest felt like it was mortar inside, crumbling, all moving cogs and pieces that rattled whenever he took a breath or stretched. With his left hand, he let the sponge soak up water under the drizzle, then ran it over his skin, avoiding bandages.

For a while, all that came down was red. It turned pink at some point. Will could feel the grains of sand from the beach on the floor of the shower, tiny pricks under the soles of his feet. He wondered if, in fact, they were not minuscule parts of him leaving his body.

If he closed his eyes, he heard only the far away chirping of a bird and the light of dawn behind the pulled blinds in the Fallow clinic’s operating room.

 

* * *

 

Bedelia was leaning over Hannibal. He was lying on the bed, on his front, skin still damp, naked, his feet crossed at the ankles, arms under the pillow. She sutured another drain in place. Her hands didn’t shake at all. Will was looking at them, very pale on Hannibal’s skin, darker.

“What made you change your mind, Will?”

“That’s assuming there was something to change.”

She cut the tread, near the swollen skin, then started on the other end of the wound. She cast a glance at Will, sitting in the armchair, his head heavy and his eyes lost in the action of the painkillers. “Change is only the introduction of matter between two parts of time that should have been continuous.”

“Time never stops flowing. You can swim against the current, but that just shows you its force,” Will said. He lifted his left hand to his face and balled a fist slowly. Opioids made his bloodstream feel thick and clumsy, like if it wasn’t sure if it would go for another turn again, or just stop at the heart, gather there and make him sink with its weight.

“And you must be a good swimmer.”

“To stay up against the stream: it’s the only way to know your own strength.”

Bedelia’s eyes were down on the wound. Hannibal didn’t tense. Will noticed the blond strand of hair at the back of his head had disappeared. It was now all a pale brown with a gray shade. “So you resisted?” she went on.

“What are we talking about?”

She brought her eyes down. “Hannibal,” she said.

Will opened his mouth, dropped his fist to the side and let his head waver behind closed eyelids. “I should be done resisting? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m just keeping you awake,” she said. “As instructed by my captor.” She cut the last thread.

“Captor.” The scissors shone in the light and Will felt like it went right through his heart. “There’s no better way for someone to be entirely alone than to be fused with their captor.” His head lolled to the side. “You’re not alone, Bedelia. You’re here with us.”

“I could be surrounded by both of you and still be alone.”

“When you want company, it’s always to share something,” Will said. His eyelids fell over his eyes, then opened again. The room and the light flickered in and out, as if stuttering. “I wonder what it is you want us to share with you.”

She didn’t answer. By her side, used gauze was piled on the nightstand, messy, blood and lymph faded in them in yellow and brown billows.

On the pillow, Hannibal turned his head, eyes on Will. “You can sleep now, Will,” he said. “Let go.”

Will meant to shake his head, but he closed his eyes and he felt like he was slipping out of himself in rivulets that pooled on the ground.

 

* * *

 

Clarice led Reba McClane to an empty office, near the morgue. The smell of bodies was replaced with the one of industrial carpet cleaner. They sat down in two armchairs opposite an empty desk. Clarice leaned back and stared at the black dusty chair in front of her. The endorphins from her morning run were long gone. Now she felt pressured and in danger.

Reba placed her bag down. Her face was still stricken with emotion, but she offered a smile, shaky, with shining eyes. “You’re a runner,” she said.

“How did you know?” 

“Your pulse is slow, like a turtle. I felt it in the crook of your arm,” Reba said. “And I guessed a bit.”

The blind woman’s eyes were hooked to the wall behind Clarice. She wondered if Reba could see some light, or if it was entirely dark. If she’d not been blind, would she have been Dolarhyde’s lover? Was there something visible in these people, something that could give it away? “You’ve met Will Graham shortly before he disappeared,” she said. “What do you remember, from that meeting?”

She shrugged. “He told me he was sorry he couldn’t keep his word to come and talk with me.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Did he mention Jack Crawford, or Hannibal Lecter?”

“I knew he worked with Jack Crawford.” She lost her focus for a moment, trying to remember maybe. “The second one, I never heard of. I mean, not from Graham, just from the news.”

“Why did he want to talk with you?”

Reba’s lips began to curve into a smile and stopped. “We talked about D… About Francis Dolarhyde.”

“What did he say?” Clarice pressed.

“That he didn’t kill me because he was trying to save himself.”

Clarice remembered Graham’s criminal profiles, complex and dense, undiscriminatingly linking psychological, criminological and anthropological elements. As striking as they were messy. “Did you agree with that?”

Reba shook her head slowly. Her hands had gone to her purse. She held it close to her chest.

 


	13. 13.

The stairs to the second floor were marble. The steps were cold, but warming quickly under his naked feet. The skin there had grown coarser, from the years spent inside canvas shoes. Similarly, the floor to his cell had been wood, not particularly warm for the lack of heating in the administrative offices around and below at night and on week-ends. For so long, he had only been a temporary resident in a circuit of professional occupants. Every five days, the faint noises he could perceive beyond the door to his cell diminished in volume. Denise went home and came back three days later.

It was strange to be back in the world. Yet, he was surprised to find things mostly identical.

The wound in his side prevented him from standing as straight as he wanted to and the clothes borrowed from Dr. Ayesh’s office were too large. They floated around him and he walked like an encumbered ghost. He massaged his left wrist. There was a small hematoma under the heel of his hand, from the intra-venous needle. The pain from the bullet wound and surgery had extended to his entire body. It was dulled by the medicine, but it remained strong and constant, like a blurred landscape in the distance, out of reach.

Bedelia waited for him near the entrance to the kitchen. She showed little fear, if any. The passage of time, it seemed, had sharpened her. Or perhaps had he not before remarked how well-defined she was, bathed in light. Or was this the dream? Will had thought she would leave, protect herself. Hannibal had given the idea thought, but she had once left in the past when she felt threatened, and he was certain that she would never do so again.

“Is it things that have subtly changed, or is it you, Hannibal?”

“Differences often lie in the eyes finding them,” he said. He stepped forward and she did not step back, motionless, peaceful.

She wore a black dress he had never seen before. It wrapped around her waist, with a lace pattern enclosing her neck. “I’ve had many perspectives on the sight of you. Over time,” she said, turning her back to him to lead him to the kitchen.

“You wonder which one you are seeing now?” He followed her, trailing his fingers along the thyme, oregano and rosemary that grew on the wall there. “Perhaps you shouldn’t ask me,” he said. “After all, I may be biased.”

She stopped when she reached the counter. Hannibal didn’t move further and allowed her to put the island between them. Something flickered on her face, near the eyes. Not exactly fright, but he felt the entirety of her attention come to rest on him, like a sharp needle. “Should I ask Will Graham to interpret?” she asked. The feel of the varnished tiles under his feet mingled with the sight of the sun on her skin. “Or does he have as little perspective as you?”

“I like Will’s vantage on me,” he said.

“Because it pleases you that he can still bear to look? Or because you like the image of yourself that you obtain through his eyes?”

“Both.” He tilted his head in curiosity. “Do you truly think me unbearable?”

“No,” she admitted gravely, brushing a strand of hair behind he ear. “How was prison?”

“Lovely. For the most part.” The wave of painkillers coursing through his body came to a crest and he steadied himself. “You answered none of my letters. Did you lack time to write?”

She seemed to hesitate, maybe not whether to say something or not. But only how to be frank, exactly. “Recipes,” she pointed out. “Not letters.”

In a faded way, he realized he knew very little of Bedelia’s home. Once, previously, after he had realized she had left, he had explored it, but with a precise intent, clinging to traces and whispers. To see the house now, spread around its inhabitant not unlike a mirrored version of their mind, both to welcome and to protect, was analogous to meeting her for the first time.

He went to his left, Bedelia’s eyes tracking him. Behind the short wooden door, he knew, was the cellar, with an excellent stock. More Beaujolais than he would have preferred and he didn’t share Bedelia’s enthusiasm for Pinot when not _grigio_ , but most were select picks. Extending his arm still hurt and the door felt heavy as it pivoted slowly. He had never been here before. The only time he had shared a meal with Bedelia in this house he had brought the wine as well. “Food is not unlike language: it has codes, it can swear and defile or write poems and epics.”

“I believe I was able to decode adequately.” Her voice followed him as he searched the rows and shelves of bottles, leaching him with words. “Congratulations on your insanity.”

He bowed. “Thank you.” In the cellar, the dark green of glass filled with the burgundy wine turned violet in the dim light. He reached for a particular bottle that caught his attention. It was three shelves from the floor, in a corner, not surrounded by others, as if on display. A Batard-Montrachet, _grand cru_ 2002, not cooled in the least, but it could do. He held out the bottle. “May I?”

Bedelia nodded. “It was waiting for you,” she said, producing a glass of wine from a cupboard. She blew the dust from the foot and handed it to him. “It was the only one remaining from your Baltimore collection. It was auctioned, along with some of the furniture.”

“Did you claim everything?”

“Yes.”

Hannibal set the bottle on the counter and ran his fingers against the tiles. In the sensation ceramic left on his fingers, everything seemed as familiar as foreign. He didn’t know if he should attribute it to his stay in prison or to the stimulation of the opioid receptors of his brain, but the blur of both seemed fitting. “Some would say obsessive behavior. To collect the possessions of a convicted criminal.”

She smiled amicably. “I argued post-traumatic stress.”

He took the corkscrew she gave him. The bottle opened with a fresh, bubbly sound. “Congratulations. On your post-traumatic stress.” The aromas held against the cork were not as developed as they should. The golden color, however, of the robe licking the walls of the glass was the same he remembered. He took the glass to his nose. Ferns, dry fruits. Earth, the wind bringing morning and ancient rivers to the senses in Florence.

“Following trauma, surgery and with only one functioning kidney, you would be playing with your life, Hannibal,” Bedelia warned him. 

He nodded gracefully. “Only a taste,” he assured her. “Not a swallow.” He took a sip and held it against his palate, closing his eyes. The fruits turned to honey, then to sweetness that reminded him of warm pastry. It extended toward the back of his throat.

After a moment, he sealed his lips back on the rim of the glass and let his sip flow down, out of his mouth and back into the remaining wine. “The vineyards of Montrachet grow from a calcareous soil that formed in the Jurassic era, almost 200 million years ago. What grows there does not only carry flavors, smells and the sensuality of the earth warmed by the sun, but also the memory of all the time before it,” he said.

“These three years were a long time for you.”

“They were.”

“Yet you don’t seem to resent Will,” she said.

He held out the glass to her over the kitchen island. Some translucent curls and bows rolled in the wine, where his sip was turning, mingling back with the rest. “How often did you see him during the Dolarhyde ordeal?” he asked.

After a moment’s hesitation, Bedelia took the glass. “A handful of times,” she answered.

Hannibal fitted the cork back in the neck of the bottle, trailing his fingers against glass like he would against flesh. “How did he seem?”

She swallowed a sip of wine and cradled the glass between both hands, near her stomach. “Indisposed,” she said. 

 

* * *

 

The news gave an update on the FBI’s position regarding allegations from the White House that they had handled Dolarhyde’s case recklessly.

Bedelia drank the rest of her glass in silence. Hannibal watched the small television, weak. The sun had risen fully outside. It warmed her back through the window. For the first time, she did wonder if she would survive. The thought didn’t bring any fear, only a strange emptiness in her chest, near the heart, like disappointment.

She had no access to her phone. But, again, the door was right there. She could walk out and leave, risk to be pursued later instead of being held captive now. She found herself wondering what Hannibal would do, what Will Graham would do. It came like a familiar thought pattern, uninteresting but comforting. It didn’t make her afraid, but it did make her angry. She should have grown to doubt her own awe.

On the television, a reporter had found the house of the Graham family, mourning the announced death of Will. The house had wooden walls, a rustic porch outside. It was nested in pines, covered in snow, a refuge in the forest. The journalist had distant footage from the two remaining family members, Molly and Walter Graham, who had, in all appearances, refused interviews. The camera had found them leaving their pick-up truck, two dogs with them. There were only brief shots of their faces. She was a woman in her late thirties, with dyed blond hair framing a round face. The boy was young, but hardened and fierce in pain.

Hannibal watched them with inscrutable eyes.

Upstairs, footsteps, slow and hesitant, creaked in the floor, above their heads. Will had woken up. The steps made their way into the corridor. Before they reached the stairway down, Hannibal went to the television and turned it off.

 

* * *

 

When Will walked in, Bedelia was putting the Batard-Montrachet bottle in a glass refrigerator.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

Hannibal stood near the cellar door, pale, nearly haggard. The painkillers roared and screamed in Will's head, bending things out of shape and turning his body into frozen mud. “Never have,” he said.

“Ironically, our journeys never take us very far.”

He frowned. “Do you still think of this as a journey through Hell, Bedelia?”

“At least, now, I have your company,” she said. 

Will’s mind was clearer now. He had woken up alone with parts of his conversation with Bedelia floating in his head, devoid of meaning. She seemed desperate, in retrospect. He didn’t know if Bedelia would have shot Hannibal. She would have used the threat of violence to obtain power and the vague sense of safety that came with it. But she wouldn’t have shot. Would she? Will wouldn’t have. “What do you gain from equating our points of view?” he asked.

“We have different experiences of the same thing. It is reassuring to compare, to some degree.”

“You are seeking reassurance?” Will asked, through a breathy smile that pulled on the stitches in his cheek.

She straightened against the counter. “We cannot be blamed for seeking safety.” 

“We,” Will said. “Haven’t seen the same things.”

She turned her head slowly toward the television screen. “We,” she said, eyes lingering on Hannibal, “Were just watching the news. Journalists found your wife and child. A house in the woods. Removed from civilization. Quite the idyllic setting.”

_They both came to the lake to fish. Will was always a little earlier in the morning than her and they crossed path when he left and she arrived. They did so in silence for weeks before Molly smiled at him, once. Something unwound in him and he smiled back._

_It was late February, colder than ever, and she was with Walter this time. He asked Will if all the dogs were his._

“ _Yes. Yes, they’re all mine,” Will said. “All seven of them.” Walter smiled and patted Rockie on the head. “You like dogs?”_

_Walter nodded and Rockie licked a big stripe on his cheek. Molly was behind him, coming from the truck, carrying the rods, step light in the crisp snow. “But we don’t have any. His father was allergic.”_

_Will frowned. Molly handed the rods to her son and told him to get to their spot on the lake. Once Walter was out of hearing range, Will offered a nervous smile. “Either he is no longer allergic. Or no longer his father.”_

_Molly turned to him, blinked in the sun reflected on the frozen lake. “He died. Four months ago. Cancer.”_

“ _I’m sorry.”_

_She shook her head and offered her hand, covered in a bright red glove. “Molly Foster.”_

_He hesitated, let the world roam around him, the noiseless woods and the soft blue sky. “Will Graham,” he said._

_Walter called after his mother from the lake. He had found the hole they had used last week. The ice was less thick, maybe they could use a pick to break through it._

_With a last smile, Molly started to jog toward the lake. She turned back half-way. “I love dogs,” she said._

Silent, Will returned upstairs, his head hefty again, the liquid sensation of blood returning to his fingertips.

He fell asleep into a half-dream that had him walking the house to break the mirrors it contained.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be going away for two weeks and, since I don't know what my options for posting chapters will be while there, I'll post all updates for that time before I go. So chapters 13 to 19 will be uploaded during the day, maybe extending into tomorrow. - x -


	14. 14.

Miriam Lass met the two agents out in the parking lot, after her lecture, that day. The drive to the Lecter house by the sea was longer than she had thought. It was spent in silence, as if they wanted to leave her alone with her thoughts. She wanted nothing but, so she counted the trees as they passed outside. They stopped near the first yellow tapes, among officers and reporters. Some journalists looked at her, but they didn’t bother with a picture. She had been in the press for a day or two, at the time of her testimony. Nothing that guaranteed importance now. She had been forgotten just like she had forgotten herself. At least, things were in phase together now.

They brought her to the entrance. The vague sense of remembrance she had hoped to feel was gone. It had seemed abstract and distant when she had first recalled the pines and the sea. She had thought she would go through her memory and obtain an echo of that.

There was nothing.

Inside the house, it looked like an ordinary crime scene. She had seen many others. At least in pictures, or in training. Broken furniture, blood, its smell partly washed off by the one of chemicals used for preservation and analysis. The same high end decoration as in the photographs from Lecter’s Baltimore home. A replica, to an extent. The sun washed in through the windows, except for a spot of shadow where a plastic sheet was in turn tented and drawn back by the wind coming from the ocean, near the piano. Shards of glass covered the ground, not scattered, but swept up in a neat pile near a table. She turned to the two agents escorting her, staying by the door. For a moment, it was unclear whether they were keeping her here, inside, or the outside out.

“Did Prurnell ask you to watch me?”

“We’re just here to escort you, Ma’am. Make sure you have everything you need,” the taller of them said. He wore a thick wool vest with leather at the cuffs and collar. An agent in homicide, if she recalled.

She looked around. Farther in, a large fireplace was built with imposing chunks of white rock. A chandelier was suspended above. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to need,” she said.

“You can look at the crime scene if you want.”

She shook her head. “I saw the pictures.” She went right, toward the kitchen. The taller agent followed her. The other one went to the window and eyed the animal skeleton. He opened a chewing gum tablet and stuffed the paper in between a carpal bone and a claw. “I’m here as the victim of another crime.”

The agents stared at each other. The shorter one pointed at the corridor. “They found your prints in the living room and in the last room on the right. We’ll just wait outside.”

They walked out in silence, while Miriam leaned on the kitchen counter. “Wait for what?” she asked the empty room. Her prosthetic hand caught some light and reflected it in a haze, like suede would.

She wrapped her other hand around it and kept walking, through the kitchen, near the piano, then into the depths of the house. Somehow, she had expected a labyrinth, much like her thoughts were to herself. In its place, she was discovering a one-level house, open and clearly mapped. In the corridor, she counted four rooms. One was a study, all polished wood, with a mix of ebony in the bookshelves and pastels in the drapes and chairs. The desk was covered in sketching paper, thick, rich, in an almost blonde off-white.

Miriam didn’t touch, nor the paper, nor the pen, lying in an ordered stack beside it. She did recall holding sketching paper. It was one of the first memories that had resurfaced. But it never led her anywhere. Everything around it was black and cold. For a long time, she had thought Lecter had left her this single memory to taunt her. Now, she wasn’t sure it wasn’t just because it was soft and beautiful and he had wanted to leave her something of him, after all.

The two next room on the left were scealed. Miriam went on to the next room on the right. She pushed the door open and nothing was familiar, nor the tall window, nor the deep purple coverlet.

Out the window, there was only the line of trees nearby. The sun shone above the sea, on the other side of the house. Miriam sat on the bed, mind still empty. She tried closing her eyes and focusing on textures, smells and sounds. But it was like feeling a flat wall with her naked hands in the dark, searching for an opening, or a scratch, or a dent. Anything that would fish her out of the smoothness of the abyss that surrounded her.

Something caught her attention near the door. She frowned and walked closer.

There were lines, carved in the wood of the doorframe, with something that didn’t need to be sharp. Maybe fingernails, or the tip of a pen.

She realized she had done them. To mark the time.

She wondered if she had done it with her left hand, or if he had left her have pens. Or maybe she still had both hands then.

It happened faster than she expected. _And she was lying in bed, lacking not the will to move, but the very possibility as if her head had been severed from her body and placed above._

_She looked down at the needle in her arm. “What is it?”_

_Dr. Lecter rolled his left shirtsleeve. A sort of curiously shimmering lilac. Miriam wanted to reach out and touch it. “A mild natural dissociative, in a very strong dosage.”_

_“Salvinorin?”_

_He nodded. “The synthetic B-type. You studied medicine?”_

_“Bio-medical sciences. One year, then I switched to law school.” She frowned. Or she thought she did. “I shouldn’t tell you that.”_

_“You have already told me a few times, Miriam.” He undid the tourniquet that compressed her arm above the elbow. In the needle, the blood flowed, mixed with the liquid and disappeared when Dr. Lecter pushed the plunger. “Why change to law? Why the rules of man rather than the rules of nature?”_

_She tried to let her head tilt back, but it made her feel like she would fall down. “Why don’t you just kill me?”_

_The syringe was empty. Lecter drew the needle from her arm and daubed it clean, holding gauze to the droplet of blood there._ _“_ _It is difficult to name a reason in particular._ _”_

_“_ _When will you kill me?_ _”_

_He disappeared from sight._ _“_ _The more I grow to know you, the more unlikely it will become,_ _” his voice said, coming from behind her shoulder. Miriam wished she could turn around, but it was only a flicker in her mind. “_ _You should be angry._ _”_

_“_ _At you? I am._ _” It was becoming difficult to keep her eyes open._

_“_ _At the ones who sent you to me._ _” Lecter came back in sight, but it was hard to see his face now. There was a light behind him and he was only shadows._

_“_ _The hallucinogens,_ _” she mumbled._ _“_ _Why..._ _”_

_“_ _The importance of undermining perception is crucial to provoking long term amnesia. The connection between your brain and reality must be severed, so that when it searches to structure itself again, it finds no firm footing._ _”_

_“_ _What will you make me forget?_ _”_

_“_ _Everything,_ _” he said. “_ _Tell me what seems real, right now._ _”_

_Miriam lifted her head up and looked around. The bed floated in the room. The floor was like waves, but miles underneath her, like they were flying. Lecter was here with her. But he was turned away. She reached out to him._ _“_ _You. You are._ _”_

_He drew back. “_ _I want you to recall the moment when you looked at the drawing in my office. What inspired you to do so,_ _” he instructed.  
_

_Her fingers kept stretching, growing leaves, turning into vines, turning into nests, turning into sky._ _“_ _Nothing in particular. It was right there. Showing off. Or just… not caring._ _”_

_A smile in the faceless voice now._ _“_ _A lot of things that give away crimes come from lack of care._ _”_ _Miriam turned her head and saw the doorway to her own room. It seemed weird to think of it like that now. Lecter’s voice followed her._ _“_ _Think about it, Miriam. There was something obvious. What made you see it?_ _”_

She came to sitting on the bed, not sure she had even lost consciousness. The memory of the words was leaving her just as she grasped at them.

 

* * *

 

He had little consciousness of time passing. He only remembered closing his eyes in the bed still faintly humid from Hannibal’s body that Bedelia had sponged clean. The contact of the sheets had reminded him of waking up gasping and terrified, keeping his eyes closed to chase sleep again before the shivers stopped, ending a nightmare with another. The painkillers had let him sleep dreamlessly before. This time, there was only an image in his mind: the doorway to a lecture hall at Quantico. He hadn’t set foot there in years. Jack waited for him on the other side. But when Will stepped inside he fell, as if there was no floor. He woke with a start, wondering if he had sprouted wings and flown or landed at the bottom and died.

Hannibal was sitting by the window. It was open. The sky was covered in clouds and it snowed. It must be late afternoon. The older man heard the change in his breathing, Will supposed. “Are you cold?” he asked, without turning.

“No,” Will said, hitching slightly higher on the pillow. Gray drapes framed the bed above him. All was in pale tones and colors, not entirely unlike a hospital. Will found it amazing that they were healing, as if the wounds were permanent. But the skin around his wounds was swollen, inflamed with lymph and trauma. “This outcome. Is it what you wanted?”

At that, Hannibal looked at him, turning slowly. His eyes weren’t as focused as before. He seemed particularly tired, drawn to the end of his means and intents. “Isn’t it difficult to differentiate between your wants and mine?” he said after a moment.

“You wanted a place where we were the only two souls, bodies, breaths existing,” Will said.

Hannibal turned back to the window. “I never sought to deprive you of the world,” he said. “You created this around us, this solitude when we became each other’s horizon.”

“It was...” Will tilted his head back in the pillow, brought back to the evenings and dinners shared in Baltimore in near darkness. His hands were tingling at his sides, under the blanket. The cold coming from the window crept up to his neck and head. “Stronger than that.” It’s only when he blinked that he realized he was crying. “It’s what got me.”

“You created a reality that you believed was a cage, where we would be only prey to each other.” Hannibal raised his hand to his eyes, inspected the goosebumps rising there. There was some blood left under his fingernails. “But instead, what you created was undistinguishable from love.”

Will turned away. “And it was true.”

Snowflakes were pushed by the wind inside the room, some landed on Hannibal’s sweater and drew tiny darker spots there. “And what is true, now, Will?”

The tears had left tracks on his cheek. They felt a bit colder than the rest of his skin. Will tried to sit up and the dizziness from his dream caught up with him. He was falling again and gripped the bed sheets. “I thought I would hate myself,” he said.

“What do you feel, then?”

Pulling the blanket higher on his torso, drawing his left arm around himself, Will got lost in the sight of the snow outside. It came in stronger falls and waves now, white on white. “Apprehension. Tension. But no worry. Just a drive.”

“No fear?”

Will remembered when they had reached the car. It was not far from the beach where they had landed, parked alone on a small patch of gravel, near a mounted binocular. Hannibal clung to him and Will was afraid. For a moment, he had thought he was afraid he would never let go. But it was not exactly that. He was afraid the fingers would loosen and fall away. “No,” he mouthed.

Hannibal got up from the chair to close the window. He did not move as smoothly, his hands gripping the arms of the chair tightly to push himself up, knuckles a starker pale in the thinner fingers. “How is the pain?”

“It’s high,” Will said.

“Violence and pain are marks of thresholds being crossed, not of mourning,” Hannibal approved, clasping a hand on his side, long fingers cinching the thick material of the sweater as he sat back down.

“When we mourn, we try to get rid of the pain.”

“And when we evolve, we welcome it.”

Will nodded to Hannibal’s abdomen, bringing a hand up to wipe the remaining tears away. “When do you get the drain out?”

Silent, Hannibal watched Will put his hands back under the blanket. “Not before two days still,” he said, finally. “The opioids you’ve taken are likely to heighten emotion. You could blame it on them.”

“They’re not the only thing that can heighten emotion. And yes,” he nodded. “I could.”

Hannibal looked down at the place where his fingers felt the flesh underneath in his right side. “I expected to feel its absence,” he said, after a moment. “My kidney.”

“Did you want your victims to feel it?” Will said. “The missing organs?”

Cocking his head, Hannibal closed his eyes, pressing his hand down until it hurt even through the fog of the painkillers. The Chesapeake Ripper seemed a lifetime away. Pain in himself, he found now, was not entirely different from causing pain in them. It brought about the same pang of reality. “I wanted them,” he started, tongue darting out to lick his lips chafed by dehydration. “To know what it meant to be whole or to be part. I was whole and they were part.”

“What do you feel?”

“A bright pain. It dulls at the outer edges toward the chest.” Hannibal opened his eyes again, brought them to Will. “And underneath that, a source of warmth and life.”

They heard Bedelia’s steps, going down the hall, from her room to the stairs. She moved to the first floor. They both listened until the noise died away. “It was snowing too,” Will said. “When they took you in.”

“So this moment and the present one are also undistinguishable.” Hannibal turned away, but there was a faint glistening to his eyes.

 

* * *

 

There were much less weirdos, potential criminals and hankering youths among the visitors and members of the Hannibal Lecter Fan Club than the FBI seemed to think. But Ardell did know what it looked like.

The site background was a dark gray, with a minimalist layout. Up front, a note invited visitors to register with a permanent or temporary nickname, so as to diminish the impact that their visiting may have on their private life. Further down that note, Ardell had included a guide to installing and using an untraceable internet browser, due to the FBI’s interest in the website. This alone attracted its share of attention. During the first year, he’d had an average of one attack a month. Then, as the case of Lecter disappeared from the news’s headlines, things quieted down.

During the trial, the sections covering pictures and news were the most popular. For a time, he rivaled Tattlecrime. Then his numbers went down as it became obvious that he was not interested in speculating or propagating rumors about cannibalistic rituals in Baltimore highest circles.

Things had stabilized at a few hundreds of visitors a day, nearly a thousand regular members. Before the escape, the pictures weren’t updated nearly as often as during the trial. When the prison break had first surfaced, anonymous users had started uploading pictures again. Ardell browsed the collection, most of them untitled. Pictures of the crash site taken from passers-by. Some of the house, taken from the neighboring woods. One – treasured – of Dolarhyde’s body being loaded on the gurney. Tattlecrime had ripped that one off. No credits, of course.

The forums were buzzing with life again. He moderated frantically, eliminating violent content as it was posted, flagging conspiracy theories, putting threats in a file of their own, which he dutifully forwarded to an inspector at his local police station. The principal subjects had to do with the FBI’s cover-up, hypotheses as to know if Lecter was alive or dead. Will Graham’s role in it, as mysterious as the one he had played in Lecter’s arrest.

When he had understood that Agents Price and Zeller wouldn’t leave without some information, he had had no choice but to give them something. He preferred to see it like that. A necessity. He had given them the only one he could.

Their nickname was The Headless One, with the capitals. They signed with the shorter to THO. They had been there not since the start, but since long enough that Ardell had given them the task to moderate the forum on the history of cannibalism. From a few allusions, Ardell thought they were a man, but then, most of the visitors were. Demographics, statistics, crime and the masculine. And all.

He messaged THO. “FBI came. Had to give them something. Gave them the two IP addresses I have on you. Just FYI.”

It took a while for the other to write back. When he did, Ardell leaned back in his chair and stared at the message, white on the black background. “Okay,” it said.

“Okay?” Ardell wrote back.

“You had no choice.” A pause. “They’re not really mine.”

Ardell waited a moment. Eventually, he felt like he was being watched. Like it was getting too long. He let his fingers hang over the keys, then typed quickly. “Wouldn’t have given them up otherwise,” he lied.

“So cheers.” THO signed off after sending him a smiley sticking out its tongue.

Closing the chat window, Ardell brought up the latest post in a thread on contemporary manifestation of cannibalism – someone advocating the virtues of eating one’s placenta after childbirth, with recipes. He wasn’t sure he could keep the recipes. After a moment, he blacked them out and flagged the post.

Then he got up to pace the room. Clarice had not returned yet. She had told him she needed to work on something she could not discuss with him at all. She was real FBI now. Ardell wondered what he would have done if he was real FBI now himself. It was as if the picture didn’t fit at all, like his past hopes and his present self were strangers on each side of a bulletproof glass.

 


	15. 15.

* * *

 

 _Fugitive_ (adj.): Pigments are fugitive when they change in physicality or color over time in certain conditions, causing paint to darken or to lighten or, sometimes, to disappear.

* * *

 

The next time Will woke up, the house was as quiet as a tomb around him.

Hannibal was asleep beside him in the bed. He was on his side, both arms curled against his chest, fetal, but grave, like a statue of himself, or an offering. He seemed paler than usual. The coverlet’s black and gray flowers looked like shadows and smoke. Will asked himself if the thought of killing him would ever leave him or if it was bound to circle his brain forever. Maybe it would strike him one day, he thought, and he would lash out, over a glass of wine, in the quiet of the kitchen and snap his neck. In his mind, Will could only see the Baltimore kitchen, the polished steel of the oven and the dark counters. The future was still closed over them, like the catacombs of the Palermo church, infinite and twisted, but dark and underground. And Hannibal would let himself be killed. Will knew now that Jack was right. He was the only who could do it. And he was the only one who couldn’t do it. He had done it once. He couldn’t possibly do it twice.

Carefully, he sat up in the bed, then slid his legs out. Hannibal didn’t move a muscle. Will’s eyes went to his chest and he waited for the next slow intake of breath. He felt lighter when there was one, slow and deep. He didn’t know if he felt reassured, or not. Things only seemed simpler, as if the obscurity had settled in a unified tone.

Outside, the snow fell calmly in the fragile evening. The ground was white as far as he could see. He dressed with jerky movements.

Even the guest room smelled of Bedelia’s perfume. Gris Montaigne, Hannibal had said. He closed the door noiselessly after himself, fingers shaking.

Bedelia waited downstairs. She had taken the seat reserved for patients for the view it gave of the outside. Will wondered what she did except waiting, or rather, what she would do when she would stop waiting and watching. Or had she already stopped?

He sat down in her seat, painstakingly. Her eyes narrowed in on him. “Why haven’t you killed one of us?” he asked her.

“The other one of you would kill me.”

“He might not,” Will said.

She fingered with a fold near the waist-clasp of her dress. “You underestimate his attachment to you.”

“He’s not unattached to you, either,” Will said. He closed his eyes at a wave of vertigo from the painkillers. “Do you like him?”

Bedelia took her eyes back to the snow outside. “I suppose that I am not as repulsed as I should be.”

Will tilted his head to the side. “Do you _like him_ like him, Bedelia?”

The woman mirrored the tilt of his head. She was as difficult to read as Hannibal, Will knew. Not to be seen as other persons could, her body language was too compact, held close, too cautious. He knew he should trust his impression. He couldn’t decide exactly if his feelings pointed more toward danger or toward fear, where Bedelia Du Maurier was concerned. Because she was scared alright. Only not acting on it, letting it coil inside her.

“It is precious to know that the violence one can feel can be acknowledged and understood,” Bedelia said, scrutinizing Will. “Have you considered asking him?”

“Asking him what?”

“To adapt to you. To change.”

Will leaned back in his seat and searched inside. Since the prison break, every moment spent with his eyes open, he had spent trying to empty and void his mind, purge it of what he remembered, make it clean, neat, trying to severe what remained, so that when he would land down among these memories they wouldn’t crush him in hurt. “If there’s one thing I don’t doubt, it’s the limit of my capacity to influence him. Interacting with Hannibal is more like building a labyrinth. Always finding new places to go.”

“When enamored, people are willing to transform themselves in all kinds of ways. He’s transformed you, made you as if you were as infatuated with him as he is with you.”

Above their heads, the wind blew in bursts on the house. “He’s brought me to a point I had no choice but to transform myself. Just like you are cornering me into cruelty.”

“The effect and extent of Hannibal’s feelings for you are not cruelty in themselves,” Bedelia said. Will turned away, stared at the window, at his hands, clean. It was night now. Bedelia would not kill them.

 

* * *

 

Miriam went back to the living room. The blood, the camera, the knife, all of it was on the nose, as obvious as could be. Yet there was bound to be something just as obvious, only not as immediately so. She stared around. Everything was equally obvious. There was nothing new to be found here. A story writing itself.

Outside, the empty sky looked back at her. If Lecter was dead, she wondered, who could she talk to? And even if she talked, who would listen?

A pale ray of sun wriggled through the clouds and found the house on the cliff. The plastic sheet in the broken window swelled with the wind.

She frowned and stepped back. 

The Tooth Fairy murders weren’t Dolarhyde’s first, she realized. He had practiced before that. But he had always broken in the houses.

 

* * *

 

Jack offered to do the interviews in his office. They sat in two chairs on either side of a small round table under the window. Clarice got her recorder from her bag and placed it between them. Jack was looking outside, seeming deep in thoughts or far away. “I’ll start with Lecter’s arrest after Muskrat Farm, then back track from there.”

Jack nodded slowly. Clarice was about to click the recorder open when he stopped her, reaching out for her hand. She pulled back before he touched her. “A last off the record conversation,” Jack offered. “What do you think of all this?”

“I don’t have to think anything about it, Jack.”

He leaned back into his seat. “I don’t believe you.” He lifted a finger. “I know Prurnell doesn’t want your opinion on what should have been done, or not. But you know Hannibal Lecter.”

“I’ve never met him.”

A ray of sunlight came into the room. When Jack leaned forward, it crossed his face, splitting it in two. “You think something happens when we meet him?”

Clarice leaned back and crossed her legs, trying not to read a need to protect herself into it. She wondered what she was afraid of exactly. Or not, quite. It wasn't fear. Or at least, it wasn't her own fear. But everyone she had seen before, related to Lecter, or who knew about him, were scared. Not immediately in a state of fright, but the dispositions they had taken to keep him at a distance and to keep others far were impressive. She had picked up on it before: that evil was perceived as seductive and that criminals were perceived, in turn, as evil through the seduction they seemed to exert on their victims. In the case of Hannibal Lecter, there had been a merging of the physical and psychological forms of dangerousness. The mask he had worn consistently during transportation, the bulletproof glass box during the trial seemed to protect others both from direct acts of violence and from being seduced, as if Lecter was a silver-tongued devil whose influence extended well out of the patient-doctor relationship.

“I don’t think Lecter’s penchant for psychological manipulation should be examined any less critically than the rest of his case,” she said.

He shook his head. “Things happen when someone meets Hannibal Lecter. In the flesh.”

“Most people speak of it like it was...” She searched for a word, toying with the recorder, turning it on its back, then again on its front. She remembered Dr. Alana Bloom’s obsessive strength, keeping her away, zealously. “Magical.”

Jack blinked in approval. “That’s not a stupid choice of words.”

Clarice sighed. The Lecter file was filled with psychological manipulation of a level of sophistication never before encountered in the literature. The use of hypnosis and drugs, systematically, to create and feed mental confusion in his patients, especially, had marked the public’s imagination. But Jack Crawford hadn’t been manipulated to that extent. Clarice thought this had to do with pride more than anything. “What was it like to you, then?” she said, stiffening in her chair.

“To me? Not to the FBI Agent?”

She gestured to the dead recorder between them. “Absolutely.”

Smoothing his tie down his chest, Jack thought for a time. “He was my friend,” he said. “And I still miss that friend.”

“It’s not impossible to befriend a serial killer,” she said. “Most psychopaths lead normal social lives.”

Jack tapped his fingers against the edge of the round table, once, twice. “It’s easier to recall that fact in the abstract.” Clarice saw his eyes go to his empty ring finger. He had rarely mentioned Bella. She knew it was off limits. Even in their closest moments, he would barely let her see him sad. “But the friendship never really dies. It sets hooks into you and it turns out to be the final blow.” 

“What final blow?”

“He made me hate myself for being his friend.” He looked down. “Hannibal Lecter has destroyed, in body or in soul, everyone I liked or loved until there was nothing left.”

Clarice didn’t say that there was her left. And she pursed her lips, now knowing that Jack only wanted to warn her. Again. “I’m warned, Jack,” she said. “Everyone has done nothing but warn me. While my subject of investigation is you.”

“Maybe you should be warned about me.”

She frowned. “I think that Hannibal Lecter’s worst crimes weren’t his murders.” She gripped the recorder. “And that’s a warning enough.”

Jack reached forward and stilled her hand as she was about to press the button. “You found the two non-Ripper cases?”

She pushed his hand away. “Not yet. I’m working on it,” she said. “Is it important?”

The Agent shrugged, eyes on hers. “Got stuck in my head. Insistant. Came back to me last night. Like I’d missed something.” He arched his eyebrows. “Again.”

For a moment, Clarice let herself see the fathoms of guilt that flickered in Jack Crawford's eyes. She would never know what it would feel like, never had. To a degree, at best, she could consider herself too unsteady to feel that kind of strength, even when breaking.

She clicked the recorder on sternly. “Muskrat farm.” Jack smiled softly and reclined back in his seat. “You were contacted by Hannibal Lecter shortly after the events?”

“When we were on the crime scene,” he told. “I received a call, on my private phone. The caller ID displayed Will Graham’s home number in Wolf Trap.”

 

* * *

 

_They found two bodies in the small barn reserved for the housing of special pigs. One had been knifed open from the sternum to the jaw, in one neat slide. The other’s head had caved in under the hits of the hammer. It was nor the artistry of the Ripper, nor the butchery left behind at the Chandel Square house. It was plain, purposeful, without beauty._

_One of the bodies was missing most of its clothes. From the looks of it, he was Hannibal’s size._

_In their booths, the pigs nosed and smelled, excited by the new sounds and the officers milling around them. Except for Margot Verger and Alana Bloom, no one had been found here alive. Hannibal was gone. Will was gone._

_Jack’s cellphone rang. He checked the caller ID and froze, then clicked the green receiver and brought the phone to his ear._

_“Hello, Jack,” Hannibal’s voice said._

_“Hannibal.”_

_“I hope you will be happy to learn that Will is safe and sound, in his home.”_

_Jack closed his eyes and couldn’t come up with an image of what that would look like. “Safe and sound?”_

_A pause on the other side. “You can discuss it with him,” Hannibal said. “Come quickly. He’s waiting for you.”_

 

* * *

 

They stayed at Bedelia’s house for two more days before Will left.

On occasions, he woke up. Sometimes, Hannibal was beside him in the bed. Sometimes, he watched the trees behind the house from the armchair by the window. Most of the time, he seemed hazy, like if he had found himself in a dream of his own. Will didn’t dare move, afraid the dream would react, dissipate or lash out. Gradually, some images blurred out and some remained with clarity.

In the morning, he didn’t take his painkillers and let the pain come back. He struggled for a few minutes, but his mind was empty. Then he took the pills and again, it became easier to think and to feel. Dr. Ayesh’s face slowly disappeared to a point where he doubted they had ever met anyone. He only remembered sitting in the car, with the shape of Baltimore becoming clearer in the distance, and thinking that he hadn’t felt betrayed by Hannibal. Some deep part of him said, if I was a killer, it’s what I would have done.

Later, he woke up thinking he had heard Molly’s voice. Around him, the bedsheets were twisted in knots, faintly damp from his body heat. He slipped out of bed and reached the door to the bedroom. He didn’t hear anything anymore, except the noises of the house. A floor creaking downstairs, the wind outside, a car passing nearby. 

He went to the chair to sit down. It was not snowing anymore. The window showed the back of the house, with two tall trees at the back. One of them was a weeping willow, its hanging dead leaves, brushing the snow.

He left the room at dawn, his steps in the corridor as careful as he could make them, his right leg weaker and tense, even with the opioids. He had put on a sweater on top of the medical tunics they had got from the clinic and a coat over that. It still had Hannibal’s blood in it. At his side, the baseball bat shone in the dim light.

A lamp was turned on in the hall. Will started to go down the stairs when Bedelia’s voice stopped him. “You’re leaving,” she said.

“I’ll be back.”

“Is Hannibal aware of that?”

Will stopped, his hand gripping the stairs’ ramp as tightly as he could. “He will be if you tell him.”

Bedelia’s hand went to play with the tie to her silk robe. There were dark tall birds near the collar, they changed to houses near the cleavage and then turned to an ocean and its plants at the bottom, all in tones of indigo and forest green. “You sought to disassociate us earlier,” she said. “And now you trust me with this?”

“Yes.”

Bedelia smiled. “Fear manifests differently in every one of us,” she said. “I _am_ afraid.”

“I know you are. You seem less afraid now. Less energy to display fear, when a lot of it actually goes into absorbing it,” he explained. “Feeds you, doesn’t it?”

Will reached the first floor, moving his injured leg stiffly. Bedelia watched him from the top of the stairs. Her hair was undone, flattened by sleep. The door closed after Will and she let out the breath she had been holding. She was alone with Hannibal once more. It felt like a return to a natural state of things, only now her heart was beating much faster. In Florence, she had the city to walk through. There was freedom enough to glimpse the world beyond the cage. Here, there were only the walls she owned.

 


	16. 16.

The interview with Clarice lasted through the entire afternoon. He narrated his impression of the Muskrat farm crime scene and indicated where it should be contrasted with the ones of Alana Bloom and Margot Verger. He also told her why he had left Will Graham alone on the scene in Wolf Trap, later that night, without following-up on the arrest and why it had been claimed to be Jack Crawford’s arrest.

Clarice had eyed him, curious and analytical, while he had explained that Hannibal Lecter's surrender was a victory of another kind. “Over you and the FBI?” Clarice had asked.

Jack had shaken his head. “A victory over Will Graham.”

“Will Graham wanted him free?”

Distant, Jack recalled that it had taken him a while before he had himself realized what it was that Will had wanted. “He wanted Hannibal not to care about him. If that meant he was free, then so be it.”

At that, the young woman hadn’t flinched or paused. Jack did not know how much she thought she knew. Her article had stirred some responses, in the FBI and outside of it. They had seldom talked about the paper, despite what others had believed. Not because he believed she did not deserve to know the truth, only because he did want to protect her.

Closing the light in his office, Jack walked out. The plants became dark shapes near the window. The table where he and Clarice had sat reflected the moonlight in a posh pool of white. For the first time, he wondered what he would do when not here. The thought didn’t worry him exactly, but it began to gnaw at his mind, like if there was a future suddenly.

Down the hall, the door to the BAU archives was cracked open. He frowned and approached it. There were noises inside, boxes being moved and set down, papers being flipped through. He pushed the door open slowly to reveal Miriam Lass.

“Doing research for lectures?” he asked her.

She had frozen in place. “Sort of,” she said, placing the box she held down. The fingers of her good arm twitched and she smiled, somewhat nervously. “What else?”

The young woman seemed a bit twitchy. Nothing close to what she had looked like when they had found her in the secluded barn, memories hazy and fumbling with her dress. But it reminded him of it, somewhat. “I heard you went to Lecter’s house on the coast,” he said, stepping in. White and brown file boxes were piled against the walls of the small room. There was a bleak white light coming from a light bulb hanging above. Miriam seemed small, with file boxes piled around her.

She nodded. “Prurnell thought I could help the investigation.”

Jack eyed the room around her, before his eyes settled on her again. “Did anything happen?”

The young woman had not touched any of the files around her since Jack had come in. She shrugged. “Nothing particular.” She crossed her arms, her prosthetic arm making an awkward angle in her shirt. “I still don’t remember anything.”

His coat hung, folded over his arm. He brushed his fingers against the cashmere. “Why do you stick around here?”

“I have nowhere else to go,” she said. She ran her right hand over the file open before her. “I was thinking,” she started. “About Dolarhyde.” 

“What about him?”

“They were all break-ins, weren’t they?”

“That and murders, yes,” Jack said, quirking an eyebrow.

Miriam held his gaze for a time, then smiled again. “For my lecture,” she explained.

Jack nodded. The young woman took the box near her and put it back in its place, on a shelf above her head. She maneuvered it mostly using her right arm, but her left could hold its weight. Jack wondered if it hurt, but he did not ask and turned away, preparing to leave.

“You think they're alive.”

Turning around slowly, Jack sighed. “Nothing supports that.”

“Then why are you so grim?”

 

* * *

 

Clarice came back late in the evening. The door to Ardell’s room was closed and everything was silent and dark, except for a lamp, turned on in the kitchen. She dropped her coat and went to her room. Standing in the bright light of the computer screen, she set the recorder to recharge. Then she fetched her temporary card out of her pocket and put it flat on her nightstand.

She sat on the bed. Outside, a street lamp was periodically going out, shining for five minutes, then dimming down rapidly and clicking off, then coming back on again. In the flickering light, the pictures from the case files came into view. Then it went out and they disappeared again. She had searched for a way to spread them out, but her bed wasn’t big enough, and the floor seemed improper. So she had pinned them all on the walls, all 41 of them, choosing a picture for each. The empty box stood in a corner.

Last night, she had thought she would take them down before going to bed, but she was too tired and she hadn’t. Yet, there had been no nightmare, as if her mind was empty. Washed out, maybe. 

Ardell knocked on her door.

Clarice shut her eyes. “If you come in, it can’t go on your website, alright?”

There was no more noise on the other side of the door for a moment. Then, “I was going to have some ramen,” Ardell said. “You want some? With shallots and tuna.”

She took off her jacket, put it down on the bed beside her. “Yeah, okay.” She took off her earrings. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

They ate sitting on the counter, slurping noodles. After that, Ardell made coffee.

“Casework?” he asked.

Clarice nodded.

“Lecter?”

She arched her eyebrows and gave a long nod.

“I won’t put it on the website,” he said.

While coffee trickled in the pot, she led him to her room. Once she had clicked her bedside lamp, all pictures seemed to pop off the walls, bright and glossy, as if these people had just died a moment ago. Ardell’s eyes were attached to them, round. He massaged his left shoulder absently with his right hand, through his thick gray hooded sweatshirt.

“What is it?” he asked. But she suspected he knew already.

“Hannibal Lecter’s entire curriculum,” she said. “Postulated, at least.”

Moving closer to the set of pictures over her desk, Ardell inspected the picture of a male body, asphyxiated then sliced open from the throat to the breast and exsanguinated. “Why do you have it here?”

Clarice had told him she was to investigate Jack Crawford. But not that she would revisit the entire Lecter case. Maybe that would be too much. “Jack Crawford wanted me to know what I was up against,” she said. “Also, there are two of them that don’t belong with the rest. I need to find them.”

She went to get them two cups of coffee. When she returned, Ardell had pulled the box from under her bed and was peering into the files. “How do you plan on doing that?” he said, not looking up.

“I didn’t have time to look that well at them,” she said, handing him his cup. “I’ll read all the files.”

“Why would you want to reopen these cases? You’re closing the Lecter case, no?”

Clarice shrugged, slipping on a loose wool shirt. “Prurnell’s closing it. I’m just a casualty.”

Ardell grinned.

“And Jack thinks it’s important,” she went on. “This whole thing is swallowing his mind. Again.”

“And you want to help him.”

“Help him being swallowed or not being swallowed?”

She smiled and took the file from Ardell’s hands, put it back in the box. “I’m supposed to have a clear mind on this.”

“Clarity is something that comes after, and from the outside,” Ardell said. “Are you taking them down to sleep?”

Clarice nodded. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

 

* * *

 

Jack Crawford had left her alone with the case files boxes around her. Was it normal that it felt like a gaping mouth? And was it normal that she felt fine, like she would finally be seeing inside the monster? She took one file, then piled the boxes back on the shelves before she turned the lights off and walked out.

And what was there, Miriam, inside the monster?

She felt as if finally the black tissue had slipped off her eyes, only by a corner. She wished she could scratch it, like an itch or a scratch until the skin came off and the pain came, satisfying.

Out in the parking, she pulled out Dr. Du Maurier’s card and called her number. The phone rang and rang endlessly, before going to voicemail. Miriam clicked it off and slipped it back in her pocket, a brief surge of despair filling her chest.

In the car, she placed the file on the seat beside her. It was funny, she thought, unamused, how she had lectured on the Marlow case many times. At first, she had done it because Will Graham used to do it and students expected it. Then, once she had made the lecture her own, she had kept the Marlow well-planned break-in and murder because it was perfect: there was nothing they didn’t know about the case, except who had done it. They knew how, they knew when - and, according to Will Graham, they even knew why. Everything except who.

Now that she knew it was Francis Dolarhyde, it seemed obvious. Exact same modus operandi. Less honed. Only the mirrors were missing, she had understood, looking at the pile of broken glass in the cliff-side house living room.

It felt liberating to know something, finally. She only wished she had someone to tell it to.

 

* * *

 

When Miriam returned home, Mirelle, her roommate, was in the kitchen, the radio playing R’n’B. She recognized Destiny’s Child. A thick mist filled the room. It smelled good too. Yet Miriam’s mind wouldn’t focus on anything, like it had made a prison of its own, to which there were no windows, no doors. Only more memories, that came in abrupt flashes, like lightning that turned into a rumbling thunder, always behind her where she could not see distinctly.

“What are you making?”

The young black woman motioned toward a deep pan with a tilt of her head. Inside, finely pulled pork bathed in red sauce that smelled of chili and lemongrass. “That’s pork,” she said. She pointed to the pot on the oven, where water boiled gently under a bamboo steamer in which small flower-shaped buns fattened. “That’s buns,” she said.

Miriam frowned. “No dumplings?”

“I felt like a change,” Mirelle shrugged.

_Hannibal Lecter placed a glass of wine before her._ _“I am afraid we will have to change some things, Miriam.”_

Miriam breathed in loudly and deeply, enough that Mirelle frowned and asked her if she was okay, placing two cooked buns on a plate. Miriam nodded, managed a smile that felt like it was tearing through her mind to come up on her face.

They ate standing in the kitchen. Miriam burned her tongue, but the porked melted on it and the dough felt like pastry. “That Barbie doll on the mantle in the living room?” she asked.

Her roommate huffed. “What? My college art project?”

“Yeah.” It was a doll, limbs dismantled and reorganized with parts from a teddy bear. It was ridiculously creepy and Mirelle had kept it for only that reason. “Can I take it?”

“Sure,” Mirelle said. “We should get some flowers for that mantle anyway.”

 

* * *

 

The tree leaves hushed, whispering. Snow fell from them and landed on her shoulders. Miriam looked at the moon. It was bright, brighter than she had seen it in the longest time.

The house was blind behind her, the white porch, the old seals broken on the door, the tall grass, the ‘For sale’ sign, the phone number washed away by four years of weather.

Miriam turned around, raised her phone and snapped a picture.

It was difficult, she thought, to learn how to talk again.

 

* * *

 

The sun warming the sheets of the bed woke him. He ran his fingers over the folds of white. The painkillers ebbed softly within, like another organ. The wound in his side was still swollen, the scar bulged and pink, but the drain was no longer necessary. Bedelia had pulled it out late last night, while Hannibal lay on his front and stared at Will, sleeping in the nearby chair, peaceful. He looked mostly peaceful now, not nearly opaque and no longer estranged, only reluctant, no doubt feeling as exposed as Hannibal did. And only when in Will’s eyesight did Hannibal himself feel parted open, insides revealed and always already devoured.

Beside the bed, the chair was now empty. There were no traces of Will. There was no clothing anywhere and the room was mostly cleaned out. On the other side of the mattress, the sheets and coverlet had been smoothed out. The curtains were drawn except for a the thin line between the two halves that let the sunlight in.

Getting dressed, his eyes searched for the knife he had frequently seen in Will’s hand recently and did not find it. He wondered how often Will had considered using it on him, but the thought felt archaic, somehow. After all, he had died already.

In the corridor, there was complete silence. He peered down the stairs. There were no voices, only rectangular patches of sun on the floors and walls and the heavy flowers of Bedelia’s perfume, rose, strongly present, an ever-lingering patchouli and, underneath all, a hint of balsamic, disguised as moss, sweet and syrupy.

Stiffness had returned to his right leg and he went down the stairs, holding the ramp. Would he be able to kill again? In this state, the stitches would tear. He would, but his own blood would spill. Many times, in the past, he had understood that Will would not be manipulated, that a push at Will’s mind would only result in a deathly embrace back. Now, he only hoped that the embrace would not let go. Maybe he should suffocate too in its hold. But his breath was caught only now that it was becoming obvious that Will was gone.

For the house was empty and undisturbed.

He went to Bedelia’s room at last. She waited for him in bed, having only recently woken. Her blond hair crowned her head in the white pillow, a black nightgown framing her shoulders in silk and tulle, like a jewel.

“Has he told you he would leave?” she asked, after he had sat down at the foot of the bed.

“There was no need to, I suppose,” he said, eyes going to the door of the en-suite bathroom, closed now.

Bedelia crossed her hands in her lap, atop the coverlet. Now that he was given the opportunity to observe, her fingers were thinner. She had aged imperceptibly, just as he had. “Had you agreed on anything?” she went on.

“He had requested that I refrain from killing.”

“Someone in particular,” she guessed. “The one who removed your kidney.”

He nodded absently. His left hand was resting on the pale gray cotton of the pants. He smoothened the wrinkles as best he could, but they remained.

“Would you hold some of your impulses back if he asked you?” she said.

“He could not ask of me what he could not ask of himself,” he said, distantly, as if absorbed. “Agreements require transparency.”

“You and Will are transparent to each other.”

“Or we are like magnifying glasses. All I see from him is the keen detail of his iris, the pores of his skin, the tenacious shivers of his thoughts.”

“You want him to see that level of detail in you.”

Hannibal’s memories of what had preceded the veterinary clinic were scarce and growing scarcer. He remembered Will’s arm around him, like it had always been there. “It is less want than fact.”

When he turned to look at her, he found her smile understanding, fine, all traces of fear now masked under certainty, her soul entirely forward, beautiful in its limpidness. “Magnification is also transformation, if only through the loss of perspective,” she said. “Relationships may be bonds, but of the kind that hold, not the kind that shape.”

She slipped out of bed and walked to the bathroom door. Her nightdress fell above the knee. He studied it intently. Her hand rested on the doorknob and she was about to turn it. “Which one of your legs do you like best?” he asked her.

He noticed the way her shoulders squared, her measured intake of breath, the movement of her eyelashes as she glanced down at herself, from her naked feet to her thighs. When she looked back up at him, she seemed nervous, but like an artist before the curtain rises, brittle and bright. “Can I think about it?” she said.

“Of course,” he replied, gently. “You may also select a recipe, if you’d like.”

 


	17. 17.

_His patient frowned and uncrossed his legs in the chair, drawing a squeak from the leather. He angled his ankles and touched the soles of his shoes together, eyes down, like a child just punished. “What’s wrong with Billy?”_

_“_ _I would prefer to use a less familiar diminutive of your name.”_

_“_ _Can I request that you use it? Is that something I can do?”_

_Hannibal nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It is an option available to you. Only be aware that, in return, I will have to consider the insistent character of your request. By asking you, for instance, what's wrong with Bill?”_

_Mr. Rubin twisted in his seat once more. Neither him, nor Dr. Lecter had mentioned the large case Rubin had placed on the desk when coming in. The case itself seemed to be a box in shape, like one that would hold a drum or an irregularly shaped musical instrument. It was tented in velvet and seemed to be of a non-negligible weight, if the light sheen of sweat visible on Mr. Rubin's brow after carrying it was any indication. When placed down on Hannibal's desk, the bottom had given off a light thud, signalling the contents were solid, glass or wood, from the soft, but full sound._

_“_ _I don't like Bill,” Billy said. “In school, we had to wear costumes for Halloween. Mine was a cowboy.”_

_Hannibal tilted his head in understanding. “Buffalo Bill.”_

_He shrugged. “Do I even look like someone who likes cows?”_

_“_ _What do you believe someone who likes cows looks like?”_

_Billy's started to smile and let it widen. One of his front teeth was missing a small chunk. “And from what I say, you'll deduce things about me, right?”_

_“_ _That is the idea of therapy. To engage in a truthful conversation with as little secrets as possible.”_

_“_ _And if I don't agree with that, then I'm hiding things from you?”_

_Dr. Lecter took his eyes to the windows to his right. It was a thick and heavy summer day, so humid the air seemed forced from the lungs. It had hit him like a punch to the chest when he had stepped out on his porch this morning. It had hit him just like that, he recalled, nearly nine years ago, give or take a few days, when he had left the plane that brought him from Paris to Baltimore. In Europe, urban spaces were less horizontal, creating shadows that protected from heat. Stone held the warmth in its core and didn't exude it like asphalt and concrete. He considered the patient again. He had killed no one in over three years and, even then, it had been an accident._

_The man sitting opposite him was only slightly younger than him, referred to him by a retiring colleague. The file indicated chronic alcoholism and bad eating habits. In the context of modern food transformation, the combination of these two factors usually led to excess fat accumulating in the liver, possibly leading, if untreated, to diabetes or chronic hepatitis. It was particularly frequent in slightly overweight men, which Mr. Rubin was. Hannibal wondered if the texture of such liver could rival the one of fattened goose or duck._

_He filed the thought away. “Not necessarily,” he said. “Defensive behavior is normal before truthfulness can be achieved.”_

_“_ _Defensive behavior,” Billy repeated. He got up and paced around his chair, placed both elbows on the back and leaned forward. “There's only one thing I don't like about therapy.”  
_

_“_ _What is that?”_

_“_ _Nothing ever means nothing.”_

_Hannibal quirked an eyebrow. “Would you not agree that this is rather a general state of affairs that it is true of all things in life – and that therapy simply puts it on the nose, so to speak?”  
_

_The patient walked to the desk and gestured toward the box. “I admit I expected you to ask about this baby a little earlier.”_

_“_ _You didn't seem to grant any importance to it, I did not see why I should.” Hannibal undid the middle button in his jacket and reclined further into his seat. “The truth that is at stake here is your truth, Mr. Rubin.”_

_“_ _Billy,” the man cut him short._

_“_ _No.”_

_Mr. Rubin tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowed to the point they were almost closed. “Yes,” he insisted._

_“_ _Why? It's not your real name,” Hannibal said. The pupils of the patient enlarged slightly. “Is it?”_

_Mr. Rubin circled the desk. “My previous psychiatrist never thought of that.”_

_“_ _I will take it as a compliment.”_

_The patient reached for the box and slid it on the wood toward him. He peered up at Hannibal. “You maintain your position that things mean something?”_

_“_ _The reverse situation requires more explanation. I prefer the elegance of minimalism to the superfluousness of absurdity.”_

_“_ _A’ight.” He opened the velvet box to reveal a large glass container, not dissimilar to a mason jar, topped by a metallic top. Inside was the severed head of a man, looking to be no older than thirty. It was mostly well preserved. Some of the hair from his beard had detached from the skin and now floated in the solution. The liquid must contain formaldehyde in a proportion, Hannibal judged, even if it was difficult to smell given the airtightness of the jar. The eyes of the head were open, as was its mouth. Its long stay in liquid had deformed the expression a bit, and it was truly impossible to say whether it was outrage or terror._

_“So,_ _” Mr. Rubin prompted._ _“_ _What does this mean?”_

 

* * *

 

Under the bright light of the lamp, the yellow envelope clashed with the glimmer that bounced off the steel of the table. The package had come in the FBI this morning. A pair of gloved hands took the pictures out carefully, using small clamps. They dropped it in a transparent evidence bag. “It’s a…” Jimmy Price tilted his head until he saw the picture sideways, like it would help. “Red door.”

Jack Crawford’s gloved hand reached for the evidence bag and smoothed the plastic over the photograph. “The package is in Will’s name?”

Price pointed to the envelope. “Not exactly,” he said. He read: “In memory of Will Graham.”

Jack frowned in a flash of disapprobation, with a surge of sadness in the curve of his mouth.

Behind him, Clarice stepped to the side to try and get a good look at the picture. It seemed as if Will Graham’s death was never going to be only Will Graham’s death. They had expected the eruption to focus on Hannibal Lecter, but apparently, Will had his share of attention as well. She liked things to be only what they were. She would fight them until the clouds and shrouds would accept to be dispelled, until there was nothing left but the bare truth. If it wasn’t truth or, at least, what wasn’t exactly truth was gone, and what was left was solid, if disturbing.

“Sent when?”

“Between midnight and 7 AM. It was mailed here, in Baltimore.”

Jack eyed the picture in the bag like it was an insect on the clean, white surface of a dinner table. “A cell-phone picture?”

Zeller nodded. “We’re still analyzing it. It was printed somewhere. Wal-Mart or other.”

Price stepped forward. “Bunch of latex fingerprints.”

“Signature Ripper. Only a clue, to taunt and poke,” Jack commented.

“But,” Zeller raised a finger. “Hannibal Lecter claimed his crimes,” he said. “If it’s a copycat, or anything like it, it’s a bad one.”

Clarice moved closer. The picture had been printed on photography paper, most likely from a machine, possibly from a disposable phone, or a cloned one. It had been taken at night, no flash, with light coming from a street lamp nearby. It showed a porch, the white walls of a house on each side of a door, with a metal mailbox on the left. The door was red, a bright, fireman red. There was a small yellow scratch, about two feet above the door knob. It matched another scratch, facing it, on the doorframe. “What’s on the door?” Clarice asked.

Price nodded. “We’ll try and get the picture enhanced. Looks like some kind of marking, like something was taped there.”

“A crime scene seal?” Clarice offered.

“Could be,” Jack agreed.

Zeller lifted both hands. “On it.”

Jack nodded his approval gravely. His coat was gathered over his arm. He chewed at his lips, considering the paths still open before him. But there was something absent from the room. He forgot how cohesive Will’s presence could be, driving them into urgent motion. He eyed Clarice. “The IP addresses from Mapp?”

“A couple of our guys are supposed to go there this afternoon. Both are from some hacker from the nineties. Nothing criminal since he turned 21,” Zeller said.

Clarice leaned over the picture. What she thought was a crime scene seal could just as well be a flicker of light from the flash. She felt the slight shake of doubt come from inside. She took out her phone. “Can I keep a picture of it? Just to…” She waved her phone in the air. “Mull it over.”

Price shrugged. “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

She had decided to hold off the interview for today. Jack had mentioned he had something to do. He hadn’t said what and left, step heavy .

It was as if the closer she got to Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, even through him, the more he distanced himself from her. She wondered how she could gain his trust again, but then, she should wonder if he ever had it. Even during their affair, he was not a talkative man. They spoke of many things, most of them orbiting the Bureau, its work, the difficulties and treacheries of its ladders and corridors. Once, Jack had talked to her about his wife, to tell Clarice she was nothing like her. Clarice had asked why.

_“Because she was light. The light of the sun, burning, boiling, making plants grow, all of that.”_

_Clarice smiled. In her hand, the paper cup of coffee burned. It was morning. She was coming back from a simulation. He was going to class. To everyone else, they appeared to be instructor and trainee. “And I’m not?”_

_“No,” he had said. “No, you’re not.”_

With no classes to go to, no training to take part in, she went back home. The streets of Baltimore were lined with snow. She didn’t think, put on her running shoes, switched her coat for a sweater and opened the door.

The roads swelled to meet her legs on every step. She turned and turned until she thought she wouldn’t get anywhere. And then suddenly, she knew where she was going.

 

* * *

 

The empty streets led Will to Chandel Square like they had been waiting for him to go there all along. He didn’t move quickly and he felt off-balance, but, soon, he was there and he stood before the house in the lucid morning, wondering when he would be done haunting this place. Or was it it that haunted him?

It was bigger than he remembered. The windows were frosted from the lack of heating. The bushes in front had grown to rise over the first steps of the porch. Will had expected it to look more abandoned than this, but when he circled the house, he found the broken windows, the back door pried open, just above the FBI crime scene seal, washed out by weather. He gripped the bat tighter, slipped by a thorny rose bush.

Abigail had come this way, he figured. Her boots had stepped through these bushes by the door. She had walked on that gravel. She had knocked quietly on this door, knowing Hannibal would open. And they all wondered where it was that she went, when she got out of the Port Haven clinic. She had gone to the only one who saw her as the killer she was.

It wasn’t hard to get inside. The door was heavy, the ebony dye of the wood starting to pale. It creaked open and Will could have walked from there to the kitchen with his eyes closed. The planks of the floors were dirtied with some mud, dead leaves. A few empty bottles of beer and whiskey were stacked in a corner, with a blanket tucked near them. Will wondered if they had got the blanket from Hannibal’s bed, but supposed that they hadn’t pushed this far.

Metcalf & Slayther Attorneys had filed countless procedures against the FBI, arguing against the use of every least proof, then against the necessity to have a warrant for every and each room of the house. Their case had become particularly easier when Hannibal had presented an insanity plea. What need was there, they said, to search the parts of the house where no crime had been committed? 

Will had shrugged and agreed: “Hannibal is insane.”

Seals had been placed on every door. The FBI had won some over the years. The study, the cellar and the basement underneath had been opened to forensics. The bedrooms upstairs were still supposed to be sealed. It had nagged in Will’s mind until his plan formed.

His first idea was to search for clothes for them, find some money that had to be hidden away here. But it was failing slowly and he only felt like he wanted to roam. To become the ghost he felt like and stay here. As his steps led him further in, he thought of never going back to the nights and lies of Hannibal Lecter. He figured that it had probably been his idea all along, to stay there and carry it all within him.

He had seen the kitchen so often in his dreams, to set foot in it was strangely cold and ghastly, as if he had expected a living and breathing fantasy, with faceless figures constantly bleeding on the floor that never flooded with their mounting screams. Red paint had been thrown on the right wall. Graffiti filled the hall. The refrigerator’s door had been dismantled.

Whatever was left to find here had already been found or had been eaten by the cloggy craving for scandalousness some had sought to gain here.

He heard a noise, somewhere to his left. For a moment, he smiled and believed it would be _Abigail, wide eyes, slit throat, her dream permeating him to the bone_.

“Don’t move. FBI,” a female voice shouted from the doorway to the kitchen behind him.

He didn’t let go of the bat and detached his hands from his sides. Like Nour Ayesh shouldn’t have let go. She could have hit him, maybe not kill him, but impair him enough that he would have fallen to a heap on the floor of the clinic, Hannibal slowly carried into death in the car, unaware. 

He turned around slowly. And found a young woman with a gray FBI Academy sweater, red cheeks, beads of sweat on her forehead and no gun to lower, only her hands, by her side.

They faced each other, frozen. She was short of breath from running. It matched his own ragged inhales, as if they were both injured, somehow.

“Jesus, you’re Will Graham.”

“And I know you,” he said, as Abigail’s face started to fade from its superimposition on hers. She was stronger, taller, less frail than Abigail. Her face was rounder and, all in all, she seemed mightier, not as much like a lost fawn, who had wandered too far in the forest and was now scared and angry.

“I was in a couple of your lectures,” she said. “Years ago.”

“Starling,” Will remembered.

She hadn’t stepped back yet. “Clarice Starling,” she said.

Will huffed wheezily. “The clear light of the stars.” His fingers hadn’t let go, still. The aluminum was growing sweaty in his grip. Starling watched his hand carefully, her own arms still not down.

“I don’t know what my parents were thinking,” she said.

His wrist started to weaken and he had to touch the tip of the bat to the ground. His shoulders gave in as he did so and the weight of the waves crashed on him again. The tide rose to his stomach, his shoulders, his mouth and it felt like giving in to banal, everyday exhaustion. “My dad just gave me his name.” He found his own voice strange, tired. “Your accent comes out when you’re nervous,” he pointed out.

She frowned, hands on her hips now. She had regained her breath. He hadn’t. “How can you tell?”

“I didn’t notice it in class,” he said. “I managed to lose it when I understood that it wasn’t the sound, exactly. It’s in the rhythm.” He paused. With his dry tongue and injured cheek, the inside of his mouth felt like cotton. He called to mind the suffocating warmth of _a Biloxi trailer park, the smells of the empty streets of Little Rock, the vague impressions on his dad's face as he smoked, on a pier_ at dawn. “The length and depth of the vowels,” he said, and after this long, the southern accent felt like slurring. 

“Hard to get rid of where you’re from. Even if it’s not who you are.”

“Even if it’s not, it’s close. Few things get as close to you as the first glimpses of world childhood cracks open before your eyes.”

At this point, Will could tell that she was not scared. Fear was easy to see, plain. It gripped the chest from inside and squeezed the air out, attracted the gaze like a known face in a foreign crowd. “Why are you here?” she asked him. 

He shook his head. “You first,” he said, leaning on the bat as if on a cane. “What’s your excuse?”

She broke their gaze and stared at the cracked wood of the cellar door. She knew what had happened there. “I like to run. I come here sometimes. To think.”

Will quirked an eyebrow. He didn’t speak right away. The more he tried to read her, the deeper he needed to get, like in a mechanism, where the cogs would try and eat him. “Don’t say that on your psych eval,” he whispered.

“I won’t. I’ve quit.”

“Then why claim to be FBI?”

“It’s temporary.” She reached in the inside pocket of her jogging pants and took out her badge. She held it out, not stepping forward. “Did yours have an expiry date on it?”

He blinked as Starling’s face once more mingled with Abigail’s. _She smiled that smile that wasn’t hers_ , that was only his, obstinately sad, with a crude strength underneath. “Don’t do that.” 

“Do what?”

Backing toward the corridor, Will placed the bat against the plain wood moldings of the doorframe. They were soiled in places. “You’re attempting to establish a bond between us based on our marginal status within the institution.” He turned back to her. She hadn’t moved, still as a statue. “Everyone who got close to me got close to him and no one escaped. I’m done sucking people in.”

 


	18. 18.

The man Clarice stared at was seldom different from the one she had laid eyes on before. Something had wavered, visibly. He didn’t hide the stitched wound on his cheek. All she could think of was Francis Dolarhyde’s short knife, on a table at the BAU, near an evidence bag. It looked innocent and tiny. Now she imagined it deep into the skin, probably up to the handle, if the size of the cut was any indication.

She wondered who had stitched it. Not Will Graham himself, not with that right hand held close to his body under the hooded sweater. Not with his weak left arm. Even as it placed the bat down, it was shaking enough that she knew it wasn’t his good side.

Bravery was a strange thing, she had always been certain of that. She wasn’t sure if it was what she was feeling now. “Your answer,” she said.

Graham’s eyes went above her head, got lost in the cupboards, the ceiling, the windows. “I know he kept some money here. I need it.”

She swallowed quietly. “The house has been wiped clean.”

Will shook his head. “This place will never be clean.”

Clarice’s memory reminded her that most of the rooms on the second floor were still objects of legal disputes. Graham had left already, but she could outrun him alright. She followed him, quietly limping through the corridor, then up the stairs. Midway, he stopped and raised his head: there was a leak in the roof and droplets of water fell silently on the sodden wood, absorbed and unknown.

Usually, when she came here, she paced from the hall to the kitchen and back, took in the faint trace of eerie that came with the place. She thought of all the things invisible, beyond the doors, under the planks of the floors. And it didn’t fit. Hannibal Lecter did not have the crude secrets of ordinary killers, like an underworld hidden in the basement. He took pleasure in balancing secrecy with publicity, wanting to hide and to be seen, not as much to control what was seen as to be able to see the play both as actor and spectator, acquire an omniscient perspective.

Graham stopped in front of the first door to his right. It was still sealed. There was a yellow police tape crossing the door, a few, adventurous graffiti on the wood. The FBI seal was a pale green, mostly faded, one of its corners peeling. The man looked at it so long, Clarice thought he was reading it. In the end, he ran a fingernail against it, at the slit between door and doorway. It gave way and he went inside.

Staying ten steps behind him, Clarice followed him, slower, eyeing everything in sight. The room was sheathed in darkness. She intended to let her eyes adjust to it, until Graham pulled the curtains open.

Everything was untouched, if dusty. Clarice had only ever seen pictures of this room on Tattlecrime, taken from the window, most likely. None of them showed the Japanese prints by the bed, the table in the corner, with books and journals piled on it, and an empty glass of wine.

Visibly, the last person to have been here, before the FBI personnel that had closed the scene, had been Hannibal Lecter himself. The bed was made, but one drawer was open. A door to a closet on the right stood ajar.

If she felt like she walked through the dreams of a ghost, she supposed Graham could feel like a ghost himself, or like a dream. After a moment of fidgeting, he opened the closet door and took a bag from the floor there.

“You’ve been in here already,” she realized.

He placed the bag on the bed, then stopped. Many thought patterns crossed his mind, before it all settled into crisp irritation standing in the middle of guilt or regret. “You’re subtle,” he replied, contained. “I came here only once. He had let me sleep downstairs and offered me the guest room for the night. I left.”

Gone from never having met Will Graham to have him stand before her, wounded, in a place he had never again seen in years, Clarice felt like she had been transported right in the heart of this man. The real heart, the one where she could stay trapped, as the ventricle filled with blood, until she drowned. “At what point did you fall in love with him?” she said. “Or should I keep being subtle?”

Graham had started opening the closed drawers. He was peering inside, his hand hesitating before it touched the clothing, then rummaged through it, searching. He froze when he heard her and stopped entirely, turning back. “The wackiest part of having your life rumored about is that people always think it went in one, single way,” he said. “While it could just have been the other way around.” The sling was tight around his right arm. It made him hold it close to his chest, as if he cradled it. “Crime is the activity that is still pictured as seduction. The bearer of the law cannot present itself as anything but the victim, like a bait, and let the monster bite.” He hadn’t lost the distantly wry tone his lectures were known for. It had only grown to be somewhat calmer than she recalled, but maybe this was the cut in his cheek. “Are you up to date on rumors, Starling?”

She swallowed dry. “Rumors say he... brainwashed you. To a degree.”

He cocked his head. “Do you share that opinion – to a degree?”

“No. I think Jack Crawford and you agreed to exploit your emotional disposition to empathy. This proved to be functional with Lecter’s narcissistic behavior. It led him to see himself in you. It also allowed you to be protected from developing a form of Stockholm Syndrome common in undercover operatives. You never identified with him because you have no…” Her voice stumbled. “No solid personality, in the traditional sense of the word.”

The man had listened to her tensely, turning to steel as the sentences formed. When she was done, he let her words fade in the silence of the room. “That’s a very well-argued point of view,” he said, then. “That paper you must have published on me-...”

“On both of you.”

He closed his eyes, opened his mouth to finish his sentence, then didn’t. “I used to hate the thought of being a subject. Too many thoughts of lab rats, petted and fed, named and known, then sliced open and layered on slides.”

“You don’t anymore?”

Graham changed topic. “How’s Jack?”

The young woman went to the side of the room. She kept him in her line of sight. “Why volunteer information and then deflect?”

“To gauge how much you know and how much you want to know,” the man replied. Clarice wondered what must Hannibal Lecter have done that caused people to lose sight of the crime for what it was and fear its imprint on their psyche, as if it would contaminate what it touched. “How’s Jack?” he repeated.

“Angry. Sad. Not that he’s showing any of it.”

“If he’s not showing any of it, how come you know?”

She shrugged. “He’s not that hard to read.”

“Not hard, but dissuasive.”

“I’m hard to dissuade,” she offered and then wondered if it was really true.

After a moment of hesitation or regard, Graham had started taking clothes from the drawers. Lose pants, cashmere sweaters. He took them to the bag and silently begun to fill it.

“I’m surprised,” he said.

“By what?”

He moved to the side of the bed. His fingers trailed on the pillow. The sheets were ruffled slightly, probably from the handful of FBI agents who’d searched this room, before the first lawsuits had been filed. “I expected you to try and get me back in,” he said. He inspected the bedside table left of the bed.

“If I did, I’d tell you we’ve received a package for you last night,” Clarice said.

Graham shrugged with his left shoulder. “I’m official serial killer food now. You’ll have a lot of them. No need to make a fuss about it.” He pursed his lips and lifted his head to the second painting, running a knuckle over the frame.

“What are you doing?”

“When planning for what could come for you at any moment, it’s best not to have one escape plan, but a thousand of them,” Graham said. He eyed the last painting, the one partially hidden by the bedside lamp. It showed an island, mountains, curls of water. He removed the light source, winced as he placed it down and reached for the framed print, taking it smoothly off its hooks in the wall. He placed it down on the bed and felt the edges of the frame again.

“Why this one?”

“Because it’s close, at arm’s reach from the bed. And partly obscured, likely to be ignored,” he said, feeling along the paper at the back of the print, then tearing it in a straight line, revealing two inch-thick wads of cash, fixed against the back of the painting. “And because it makes sense for Hannibal to think of himself as an island.”

Clarice reached for her phone in the strapped pocket of her pants. She brought the picture she had taken this morning on the main screen and showed it to him. “What sense does this make?”

It did get Graham’s attention. He tilted his head to the side and frowned minutely while examining the picture, then turned away sharply with a huff. “It’s a crime scene,” he said. He placed the cash with the clothing. “A double murder. 2011. Mr. And Mrs Marlow.” He zipped the bag shut. “By Francis Dolarhyde.”

“There’s nothing that early in his file.”

“There should.”

She shook her head. “Why the picture? Someone wants to tell you you’ve been outsmarted?”

“Not outsmarted. That I had the wrong focus.”

“Dolarhyde is dead. What’s the focus left to have?”

Graham tested the weight of the bag. It didn’t seem heavy, yet his fingers shook around the handle. “Reconstituting the past becomes more important than living in the present moment, if the present moment is stolen from you.”

“Someone’s after your past?”

He shook his head slowly, fanned out his fingers, fisted them against his palm. “Their own. Where it intersects with mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Stop trying to understand,” he said. “Go for an image.” In a move quicker than she had believed him capable of, he snatched the phone from her hand and threw it on the bed. “An image in your head. Don’t overthink it. It’s always just on the surface.” 

“I can’t not overthink.”

“Yes, you can. The first thing, Starling.”

His eyes hadn’t left hers. She knew it was a competition. Who would give way first? With a short sigh, she closed her eyes and played. “There’s nothing.”

“There’s never nothing. Go in the dark places you shouldn’t go.”

“The darkest place I’ve been is here, with you,” she said.

“Then stay here,” he said.

Clarice breathed out and cracked an eye open. Graham was still watching her. On the bed, the print was lying flat under its unmade frame. “A bottle on the sea,” she said. “A message in a bottle, out on the sea.”

For a while, Graham said nothing. He took the bag from the bed. “See?” he said. “It’s not that hard.” He started toward the door. “Go to the Marlows’ house. There’ll be something.”

“This is the message. We’re searching for its content?”

“In memory, things always hide other things. You look into something, there’s something else. Objects contain worlds,” he said. “Bring Jack along. He might know what stands out.”

“You know who this is.”

“Hannibal Lecter’s death would create many ripples. The best way to ensure that was to generate the ripples preemptively.” He opened the door, turned his back to her. “Are you going to follow me?”

“You don’t want that,” she said. 

Graham pulled the hood of the sweater back over his head. “You shouldn’t care what I want.” Clarice looked at the remnants of the painting on the bed, thought of placing it back decently in its frame, even broken. But that would leave her fingerprints on it. “What I would want is for you to consider a question.”

“What question?”

“Look down into yourself as far as you can go. Don’t stop for anything. Not for hurt, not for worry. Until you can tell yourself what you will do with all your rage.”

He left her alone in the room. She picked up her phone from the bed after she had heard him go out through the back door. She exhaled slowly as the mounted energy decreased in her and left her tense, with stress or excitement, it was impossible to tell. Her breath formed mist out of her mouth and she realized she was freezing. The sweat from her run had frozen on her skin, in the hollows of her knees and elbows, between her shoulders, at the back of her neck.

Clarice walked out numbly. When she was at the top of the stairs, she figured it was best to be as practical as she could. She bunched up her sweater sleeve around her hand, took hold of the door knob and closed the door.

 

* * *

 

In a corner of Bedelia Du Maurier’s living room stood a short and deep chest. It was mounted on a wooden table, its feet like vines wrapped around curved wood, with budding lilac flowers and their heart-shaped leaves. Its glass doors were patterned with fine engravings of gold. When one looked closer, the line was drawn by the addition of tiny golden dots, which were, upon even closer examination, minuscule spirals, its ever-circling line as fine as a hair.

Inside, traditional vinyl records were stored in slots carved in the wood. Judging by the trace of dust his fingers collected when Hannibal slid on door open, they had not been played in quite some time. The antique turntable on the table pedestal beside the chest was made of the same black walnut, its foot imitating a lilac tree, its multiple stems with bark like thorns wrapping around the base, becoming branches and flowers when they reached the top, like an offering.

Prison had given him the chance to listen to music within the walls of his mind. Whatever music in whatever form and whenever he pleased. But he found he had deeply missed the shiver in his neck and the hair coming to stand on his nape when a sound’s pitch filled a room. Even for all the work his memory could provide, it would lose itself in recreating all the echoes on stones and surfaces and, most of the time, he ended up imagining music played in the void of a concert room where he was the only spectator.

Bedelia was seated on the couch behind him, keen, her legs tucked underneath her. Eventually, even a look could become an act. The weight of eyes were on some as were the pricks of needles: insignificant until they found the appropriate crux of nerves. “Your relationship with Will Graham has reached such a point that it is difficult for us to discuss it,” she began.

As breakfast, she had a cup of tea on the table before her. It steamed, untouched. “What point would that be?” Hannibal said, a hand to his flank, smooth again without the drain, while he leaned down to inspect the disks.

“A degree of intimacy so high that any qualification of it from an outsider would proportionally appear as little unfitting as personality tests in magazines,” she said. “Any description would be normative, any word, however vague or profound, restrictive.”

“Psychology and psychiatry are nothing if not the vocabulary apt to describe a failure,” Hannibal said. He found the disk he was looking for, Pergolesi’s _Orfeo_ cantata. “Or a downfall.”

“Similarly, I am afraid my capacity to help you has reached its limit.”

Hannibal slipped the disk out of its silken pocket. “You can provide other things now.”

The woman’s hand froze for a moment, near her tea cup. “Meat?” she said, finally curling her fingers around the cup’s handle. It took the shape of a bird’s tiny neck, its head aligned with the edge, tilted on the side as if in submission. “All of us are meat, lost in the wild tumble that agitates the things of the world.”

“Did you hope for anything else?”

“Hope is a bloated word, laden with expectations and desires.” She paused to take a slow sip, calm, airy, divine. “What are your hopes, Hannibal?”

He held the vinyl disk carefully, fingertips on the outer edge, cautious as if before a dream. “Even as a child, I had difficulties projecting myself in the future.”

Above her cup, Bedelia smiled slowly, relishing into her observation. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“Yes,” he said.

She turned away while he lifted the cover of the turntable, then the needle, to place the disk down. “Concerning my… meal, I believed you would like to exert control on exactly how I taste.”

“In the circumstances where control could be exerted over you, it would have added to the taste,” Hannibal said. He wiped a grain of dust from the black vinyl surface. “But animals seized in their wild habitat have a flavor of their own.”

“What do they taste like?” 

“Like the moment of their capture. The one blink of suffering when death enters their skin, by surprise, adds a drop of acidity. Or the tension from a long chase gives a stiffness to the meat that can be a homage to their life - in the right hands.”

“You enjoy bringing others down to matter.” She watched him close the turntable, not starting the music yet. “Exposing our parts for what they are.”

“When they revert to their material self, persons become deep shadows of who they were. A feeling they cannot experience for themselves.”

“Which you experience for them?”

He bowed gracefully at her. “I suppose it is not entirely unlike…” he began.

“A deformed empathy, that starts with death.”

The thought of Will Graham crossed Hannibal’s face like a draft of water, taking one down under the surface, where they were crushed into the sands made from the bodies of dead monsters. He looked down and thumbed the edge of the turntable. “Virgil has written at length of persons metamorphosing in matter: trees, rivers, animals at best,” he said. “To be transformed into yourself and fed is not such an uncertain faith.”

Bedelia took her empty cup from her lap to the glass table before her, then crossed her legs smoothly. “There is a species of African butterflies called nymphs. Mistakenly, in the 19th century, they were named snails based on the form of their larvae.”

“In western mythology, nymphs have only their own desire or wishful seduction to blame for their transformation.”

She tried to smile. Initially, the sentence formed as what she thought he would like to hear. But when she spoke, she realized she meant it to. “It was worth it,” she said. “And I have yet to be transformed.” He nodded. “You believe a meal like this can be shared between us, cordially?”

“I have shared such meals before.” He got lost in memory for a moment, resting his chin on the hem of the large cotton sweater. “It is less awkward than it seems.”

Bedelia glanced at her hands in her lap. Somewhere near her foot, a ray of sunlight spasmed, sometimes hidden behind clouds, then revealed. “Did you ever doubt that I have your care at heart?”

He tilted his head and considered the question. “No. Only it does not exclude the care for your own heart.”

“You have always liked to blur lines and roles. Which one of us, for instance, is the other’s therapist.”

“We are both therapists,” he offered. “The patient, this fictitious construction, is always absent from his own therapy. The goal is to make him appear, be fully present.”

“You will become present while you eat me. As I slowly fade,” she said.

He smiled, not without niceness, she thought. All of him, with her, now, was genuine and she found that she didn’t dislike it. “Piece by piece.” He turned his back to her, motions slightly impaired by a streak of tiredness maybe. He opened the turntable’s cover again, set the disk in motion and let the needle fall down in place. “Let me guess. The left leg.”

She swallowed. Around them the cracks of analogical static from the vinyl fused, with the soft noises of bows landing on strings and the soft thuds of the musicians’ feet as they prepared. At no moment, she had begun to think how the scene would play. Would he do it here? It was difficult to envision it in any short time, given his state. He could still not tolerate solid foods. “It was easy,” she said. “I’m right-handed and thus generally favors the right side of my body.”

He blinked warmly. “Granted.”

He sat down in the armchair and she had the distinct feeling that he let her watch him. His face became peaceful as the first notes came, then he closed his eyes as the voice of the singer began to mourn Orfeo and Eurydice’s death. Bedelia wondered what part of Hannibal had died with Will’s departure and if one of them would die, given his return. She kept staring, and slowly, the calm on Hannibal’s face became sorrow, then emptiness as the music enveloped them both.

 

* * *

 

The police arrived slightly earlier than he had expected. Perhaps still hoping for a lead on the Lecter case, they came rushed in a bright flow of sirens and their screaming. The two IP addresses had led them to one computer, said computer was in the bedroom of a lonely and ignored teenager, in the house across the street, on the second floor. Sometimes, she got up and paced her room, late at night, talking on the phone. There was a scarf she would put over her bedside lamp to create dim light in the room, but his gaze was piercing and he could see her.

They stayed in the house for a while. It would go like this then, talking to the parents, then moving to the young woman herself, then back to the parents. Perhaps, he thought, moving from the window, they would take her away, speak to her in custody.

He wondered what that would be like. After all, he had never in his life seen a policeman up close, the shining brightness of justice, the well-lit rooms to interrogate, examine and judge, where there would be no privacy anymore. 

After half a hour, it became fairly boring. The cars were parked in front of the house, in a half circle. One policeman got out of the house to park one of them properly so as not to obstruct traffic. And life started again.

The FBI van left soon after, but he had gone back to his work station to work on the head further. He found than an eye’s sclera had quite the texture of almond paste. The color would be much more difficult to obtain. Meaning, he had found over the years, came from the smallest touches, the brush of a pencil, the chips in bone, the smoothness created by the swelling of healing flesh.

 

* * *

 

His footsteps echoed off the beige walls of the small county jail. Jack listened to the clear, regular noises as he would hear to words. They carried him away with them. Years ago, he had seen Will Graham sit in trial, accused, and he had decided that truth was preferable to a career, that it would be more satisfying than the emotional crack of a match that would come from his confession, that it was better than the job that would lead to other confessions. Whenever he would see bodies, he would think of Will Graham. What word should he have heard differently? But he was still only a fool. There were no signs, nothing. Hannibal Lecter had made sure it seemed like Will had always been like this.

Now Jack’s beliefs were crumpled paper, forgotten by the fire, waiting to be burned, only an afterthought.

He roused one of the two FBI agents sent to watch over their two witnesses. Ms. Kusachi, especially, was of interest to him. He had sat in his office in Quantico thinking of what she could be thinking about. If she would be thinking about anything. 

The younger man sat up straight, like a bolt in his seat, and shook his partner awake. “Been here a long time?” Jack asked them.

“Yes.” He cleared his voice, but it remained distant, holding memories of coffee and convenience store sandwiches. “Yes, Sir.”

Jack lifted a casual, charitable hand. “Nothing the matter. I wouldn’t mind some shuteye myself,” he said. “Our two witnesses? What’s new?”

“We have no accusations to keep them, Sir. Even trespassing on a crime scene wouldn’t stick,” he said, adjusting his shirt, like he could hide the small mustard stain under the tie, smooth the wrinkles out and straighten the tie, as if everything would be alright. As if he wouldn’t be sleeping under the brightest white lights in a stiff chair in a waiting space.

“Her,” the other agent said, yawning.

“What did you say?” Jack said. 

The man froze, his two arms still stretched on either side of his head. “I said her.” He swallowed, brought his hands to rest flat on his thighs, like a schooled boy. “There’s only one. The other was bailed out by her lawyer.”

“Which one?” Jack articulated.

From the room off the side, with the single cell, came the sting of a well-known voice: “If it was me, I failed to notice it,” Freddie Lounds said.

Jack’s gaze stayed on the two agents for a time, light as a blade, until he took it down to his feet, then turned and headed to the end of the room, to Lounds’s cell. The cell was small, county sized, with a bunk, a chair, a toilet and a sink. Lounds had turned the chair so that it faced the bars. She sat on it cross-legged, her fingers draped over her pointed knee. With the seawater drying, the curls of her hair had thickened to a large, bubble-shaped aura around her head, darker and stragglier than he remembered. She looked raw and fighting, like a fox that’s run all night in the forest after a prey too small and too fast. She was now hungry and disgruntled.

Her smile showed only teeth. “Hello, Agent Crawford.”

“Ms. Lounds.”

“A mysterious stranger held as a witness escapes the FBI’s eagle-eyed watch: Has an accomplice of Hannibal Lecter (again) eluded justice?” she recited, reading from her notepad. She looked up at Jack. “Again is bracketed for effect.”

“Packs a punch,” Jack approved.

Freddie smiled, with more contentment than quiet ferocity now. “Doesn’t it? I also have this one: Tale of an imprisoned journalist: How far will the FBI go to cover up their…” She stopped and asked Jack: “I’m not sure. Their dumbfounding mistake or their stupendous failure?”

“That’s enough,” Jack said.

“Oh, you are alright. I’ve had enough,” Freddie said, slapping her notepad close. “Have you?”

Jack tried to leave the question at the bottom of his mind. He turned to the two agents, who had crept up behind him and now stood against the wall, hands crossed in their backs. “The lawyer must have signed the release form.”

The first of them nodded. “Yes, Sir. I’ll check the logs right away.”

“Or I could tell you right now…” Lounds said. “That it was Byron Metcalf.”

“Lecter’s lawyer?”

“You’re smart, Agent Crawford,” she said. “When the FBI is done with you, I could find you some work, if you’re interested.”

“He came here alone?”

Lounds shook her head in mock gravity. “No. There was someone else with him.”

Approaching the bars until they nearly touched his face, Jack said, low and rumbling, “Who?”

The journalist’s eyes didn’t leave his as she stood and walked closer to the bars. “Oh dear. I forgot.”

“What do you want?”

“To get out of here. With my phone. Untouched. And a coffee, if you would be so kind,” she said. “And I’ll tell you what he looks like.”

Jack turned to the agents behind him. “Get me someone to open this cell.”

 


	19. 19.

* * *

 

 _Mordant_ (n.) : An oily substance used to help dyes adhere to fiber or to bind metals to surfaces through chelation; also a corrosive agent used to etch lines into printing plates.

 

* * *

 

He had slung the duffle bag on his good shoulder. Nonetheless, he advanced slowly, walking amid the tall trees behind Bedelia Du Maurier’s house. Through the painkillers, he felt the strain put on his right leg, the insistent throbbing in the wound. An animal wanting to come out. His right feet sunk deeper than the left one in the snow, as if it wanted to make sure there was ground under him.

He reached the house, wide, spread, golden in the night and saw no shadows in the windows, most of which were dark and blind. He tried to remember what Molly’s house had looked like from afar, when illuminated from within. Like a beating heart, filled with homes, secrets and smiles. But the more he summoned the vision, the hazier the result became. The more he thought about it, the more he slowly became the stranger in the woods, looking in at a life that wasn’t his, and about which he felt no particular desire or for which he didn't wish. He stayed so long in these woods that his feet turned into roots and his fingers into branches until eventually he was only a tree standing tall above the underbrush. A bird came to sit on his shoulder and tried to beak its way into his ear, his eye, his temple. But Will kept staring and found himself inside the house, with Molly and Walter.

The building loomed over him as he got closer. In this neighbourhood, houses were wealthy, spacious and distant from each other, some of them clearly uninhabited during the winter.

The back door was in a small hall that led to the kitchen. Will placed the bag down. Snowflakes in his hair were starting to melt and formed drops at his temples. The cold was starting to leave him and with the heat of inside came more dull pain.

Hannibal was in the kitchen. His back was to the door. He waited for Will to join him and they stared at the snow falling outside. Near Hannibal's hand, there was a knife, ordinary but long and heavy. It wasn’t dissimilar from what he remembered from Hannibal's own kitchen. Hannibal made no movement to take hold of it.

The blade was clean, but the blood could have been wiped from it. Will swallowed. “Is she dead?”

“If she were, would you consider it your responsibility?”

“No,” Will said. “Bedelia is the freest of us. Aerial. Slipping through the cracks.”

There was a small twitch in Hannibal's mouth. “You still hesitate between leaving me and killing me.”

Will frowned. “I'm surprised that you still think I could.”

“Leave, or cause my death?”

“Both,” Will breathed. “Could you cause mine?”

“I already tried and failed.”

Will couldn’t shake the feeling of the saw indenting his skin. When it had started to eat at the bone, his whole body had shaken. And he wasn't afraid at all. The rush of violence and pain and horror was detached from him, like a shadow projected on the ground. “There's a difference between being prevented,” he said. “And failing. Failing implies the crumpling of intent.”

Fingers reaching for the knife, Hannibal ran his thumb over the handle. It seemed heavy. “I had intent,” he said. “To carve someone's absence into the void, and rearrange all of my life around that emptiness.”

“And that existence seemed agreable?” Will whispered. His eyes left Hannibal and went to the knife.

“Life is not an emotion, only a movement.”

 The blade was near Will's face. “A quick stab to the neck. You’d catch anything. Artery or trachea.”

“The brain is fragile, but the neck is far less protected,” Hannibal approved.

Will caught sight of a tear, at the corner of Hannibal’s eye. He blinked because it seemed to sting his own eye and found the same tear rolling on his cheek. “This is not about your death and my death.”

Hannibal cocked his head. The tear had never fallen. It stayed at the lid, brightening his eye. “Then what is it about?”

“How much of you there is in me.”

Lifting his left hand, Hannibal placed it on Will’s throat, setting the knife back down on the counter. There was no sound. Only the soft ruffling of their breaths. “Have we not tried to become each other and erase all distinctive traits, at the best of our capacities?”

“We had different reasons,” Will said. The fingers tightened. “Even looking back, as far as I can go, I cannot find a distinction that isn't also a lie.” Will’s head tilted up so that he had no choice but to meet Hannibal’s gaze. Yet Will could feel the other man looking right through him, as if through a reflection of himself, or as if he searched for something beyond Will, in his own memory. But Will could feel him fail, his eyes slowly focusing back on him. It made him tremble, but it wasn’t him trembling. They shook together with the same rumble.

Running his thumb over the hollow where the trachea disappeared under the jaw, Hannibal said, “You can escape, whenever you want.” His right hand grasped Will’s left one, hanging at his side and pressed it to the wound on his abdomen. Will’s eyes closed when Hannibal made him grip the flesh underneath. “A quick punch would cut my breath. Possibly reopen the wound. It wouldn’t do much damage to your shoulder.”

Will shook his head in Hannibal's grip.

“Why?” Hannibal asked.

“I don’t want to.”

Will took his head down until his forehead touched Hannibal's chin. He heard him speak against his hair. “What do you want, Will?”

Stiffening, Will searched himself for a moment, trying to pin down a source, something that words would suit and not crush. It shivered inside him like a small animal would, its heart beating faster than his. Every time he attempted to catch it, it only moved faster and ducked away, taking the sludge of images of his mind along with it.

Eventually, Hannibal’s hand dropped from his throat. He pushed Will away gently with a nudge of his chin.

For a time, Will stared at the knife on the counter. He took it and put it back in the block. “We needed clothes and cash,” he explained, breathing short and rasp. “I thought of going to Wolf Trap. But it’s too far out.”

Hannibal’s lips parted and Will saw him search again, inside mind or memory. Then, he nodded lightly and moved away, closer to the cellar door, his hand resting on his side. He had paled slightly. “You kept the house in Wolf Trap?”

“Molly thought we should sell it,” Will said. They had talked about it just two weeks ago, when driving back from the lake. It seemed locked away now, behind a glass, safe, where he couldn’t reach. He ran a hand over his eyes. On their way down, his fingers brushed the stitches on his cheek and the ridge of flesh underneath. “But we never got around to it.” He didn't say that he could not really bear to let it go, that he somehow thought of it as his own, private haunted mansion, that he would not trust it with anyone else, even if he could never go back.

Hannibal had listened to him intently, pondering, again, whether to push the subject or not, Will knew. It nudged him and would continue. But then Hannibal turned toward the entrance of the kitchen and eyed the bag. “What has become of Chandel Square?”

“It’s been vandalized. Seals were broken in a few places. The roof is leaking over the staircase.”

“In the fall, dead leaves are prone to collect in the rainspouts. If they’re not cleaned, water tends to pool and freeze come winter,” Hannibal explained, quietly. “Had I known, I could have directed your search, especially for the money.”

Will tilted his head down and took his left hand to his right shoulder, to massage the returning ache. “Do you remember the day we met?”

Facing him, Hannibal narrowed his eyes. Will found it in himself to breathe, if only to relieve the tension nested in his chest, the one that had expected Hannibal to slit his throat, that had also hoped he would do it, and that had also wanted to leave, now, forever. Nothing could be farther from the moment of their conjoint interview with Jack, and yet nothing drew them back to it. Now, Hannibal’s hair was shorter, he was thinner, older, bruised and his eyes shone darkly. “Yes,” he said. “In Jack’s office.”

“In Jack’s office,” Will repeated, numbly, as the memory played again before his eyes, empty, the lies so thick between them, and yet, in fact, looking back, Hannibal had seemed pleased. “When Jack asked me to that meeting, he came in during my lecture. I was talking about the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Marlow.” The names curled strangely in his mouth, as if they belonged to the past as well. Hannibal’s gaze had not let go of him. “Door kicked in. Mr. Marlow shot, dead. Mrs. Marlow paralyzed by a bullet to the neck, left agonizing,” he narrated. “They were murdered by Francis Dolarhyde.”

A small smile curled Hannibal’s lips. A look of fondness bloomed on his cheeks as if thinking of an old friend. “And the circularity of time is not only an ancient Greek fable after all.”

“I thought you would appreciate the irony,” Will said.

“What prompted you to think back of it?”

Will stepped back. “There was someone at your house. From the FBI.”

“An agent?”

Shaking his head, Will went to the duffle bag, where he had left it beside the door. “A trainee. Starling, Clarice.”

The other man ducked his head with the memory that came to him. “She wrote an article. On our relation as officer of the law and criminal. Very clever. Ambitious. I read it when it was published in the Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice.”

Will placed the bag on the counter between them and got the two wads of bills out. “Is it one where I’m insane?” he said quietly. While his mind wandered off from the pain, Will had begun to ask himself if this was the right word after all. He knew the shock within of the knowledge of the endless beauty of death. He knew the moment when the parts of him, what he thought were shards, had turned out to be drops, that ran to join in a pool of liquid, and then that liquid became his blood, then it was a weapon, and then it wasn’t his blood anymore. He knew of the roaring emptiness inside, that gathered at the end of his hands, on the tip of the blade. For all the times he had thought of himself as insane, and all those when he had believed he was, he had never fathomed it would be beautiful. Why had Hannibal not told him that he would become the light, weightless? That he would see terror and intensity and fire in the eyes of others and walk through it?

Hannibal tilted his head on the side. “You wouldn’t have liked it,” he said.

Wondering if Bedelia listened in on them, Will went on. “Someone sent a picture of the Marlow crime scene to Quantico, addressed to me.”

“This someone wants you to know that they know Francis Dolarhyde better than you,” Hannibal said.

Nodding, Will hung his head. “And they want to talk.”

“All you have to do is listen, then.”

Will was tempted to say that the last time he had listened to this kind of darkness, it had swallowed his ear, or seeped in through there and into his brain. Or maybe it would be stuck in his throat, again.

 

* * *

 

Hannibal had returned upstairs. Will found Bedelia Du Maurier in the living room, by the window, as if she lay in wait for something. And she could be, he reflected.

He sat back in the armchair. The material was softer than the leather of those in Hannibal’s office, was one of the things he had noticed almost immediately. Often, he had wondered if this softer version of a therapy room was not nestled somewhere in Hannibal’s mind. Had he taken this with him in his mind palace as well? She was there alright, a mirror, as much as a foe, not unequal, but deserving to be eaten because of her worth and not opposite it. At the limits of Will’s mind, as he fitted it as tightly as he could to Hannibal’s, the shadows of Mischa Lecter appeared, running, faceless and whimsical.

Opposite him, Bedelia didn’t sit down. She remained behind her chair, hands crossed before her. “This situation must be difficult for you,” she said.

“Which part?” Will said. The stitches in his cheek, preventing him from screaming as he felt like it? The ones in his chest, stopping him from breathing in as deep as he could?

“Being loved.”

It was a strange wound indeed. At first, it had felt like a giant cut, gaping wide, and as Will had started to remember, he had discovered it was all scar tissue underneath, of cuts already made, of love already seen. At the time, the name seemed improper. It still did. “It is. Difficult.”

“One can feel trapped by that feeling.”

“Trapped? More than in prison?”

“In prison, you could hide,” Bedelia said. “Behind the certainty of your innocence.”

“There is no certainty in love.”

She turned her head to the window, then let her eyes be drawn to the minibar. “Beyond envelopment and penetration, we have few analogies for it,” she said. “Either it welcomes, or it tears apart, leaving little of an identity behind.”

“Identity has always been a flickering notion.” Will swallowed. “In me.”

Bedelia had walked to the end of the room. She reached for a short square-shaped bottle and removed its glass cork. “It is always possible, in love, to distract the other with another persona, until they love it more than they love you.”

“There are a lot of persons I’m not, many of which I am,” Will said, while his mind went back to Molly’s house, where he had most been not not himself.

Pouring herself a glass of amber-colored liquor, Bedelia gazed at Will over the rim. Her eyes never shone, like a chalkboard. “You went to his home and brought back his clothes,” she said. “They are a tad too large for you.”

“You could wrap yourself in them like in a blanket, Bedelia. To nest, like a bird.”

“He will never refrain himself to the proportions you hope for,” she said. “For you, this is still, mostly, an incident, or an occasion.”

She finished her glass, while Will massaged his right arm, where pins and needles had settled. “Whatever it is, I’m taking him with me.”

She was about to pour more liquor into her glass, but placed it down. It landed with a light thud. “The difference between manipulation and love is sometimes non-existent,” she pointed out.

Will smiled and let his smile fade. He got up painstakingly, slowly, one limb, and it seemed one muscle, or maybe one cell, at a time. “You go from the assumption that I was manipulating him.”

Bedelia stared after him as he left, limping, to return to his room. There had to be very little time left now. He had not even asked about her phone, not asked to see it. After he had left this morning, she had found it in the bedside table while Hannibal slept, motionless, scarred.

The phone was still where she had put it, underneath her robe, tucked in her underwear, its shape hidden by the sash of her dress.

 

* * *

 

_On a Monday morning, Bedelia’s phone rang. She placed her tea cup down and swung a spoon in the liquid, causing the leaves that sat at the bottom to rise until they floated again, a swirling myriad._

_The phone was still ringing. Calls were rare at this number. Always now, she expected to hear Hannibal’s voice. Through a few hoops, perhaps he could have called her from prison, but he had refrained, apparently._

_She saw the blocked caller ID. Her thumb twitched and she answered. “Dr. Du Maurier,” the voice on the other end said. It was a voice soft with practiced cordiality, distant yet approachable. It reminded her of Hannibal immediately and, worryingly, she did not know precisely why._

_“Yes?”_

_In her cup, the tea leaves floated still, circling each other in spirals that slowed down, as if they were dragged in the deep. “I was wondering where I could acquire a copy of the book based on your experience with Hannibal Lecter.”_

_“It is available in bookstores. Not from my private phone number.”_

_“I apologize if this appears threatening. I only wanted to demonstrate my keen interest in your work.”_

_Touching her lips to her tea, she realized it had gone from too hot to only mildly warm. “My work?”_

_“There is much to be said of those who transform their experience of reality in such well-documented fiction. Imagination must be a well to them while it remains underground water for most,” the voice said._

_Bedelia paused to consider the shielded threat. During the time of Hannibal’s incarceration, ever since the beginning of the trial, no admirer had surfaced. Perhaps now was the time, finally. “You claim to know many things about me,” she said. “And I don’t have any information on you.”_

_“I did not mean to be uncivil. Only to attract your attention in a way that perhaps my name will eclipse.”_

_“And what would that name be?”_

_“Lecter. Robertas Lecter,” he said._

_When Bedelia set her eyes back down on her cup, the world seemed clearer for a moment, the way it became when the clouds gathered and hid the bright rays of the sun, shielding the eyes from the too bright glimmers. Everything was peaceful and intriguing. “Count, if I’m correct?”_

_“You are.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited these 6 parts all afternoon and in the process crashed my spell-checker. Twice. I didn't even know you could crash those. But don't worry, there are still plenty of typos and inelegances, I'm sure, because I'm holistic instead of analytical when it comes to languages. I'll probably tweak it forever anyhow.
> 
> Next update will be on July 7.


	20. 20.

Chiyoh was brought to a house, far into the quiet depths of New Jersey. In the car, Uncle was beside her and looked out the window, his hands crossed in his lap. The last thing she remembered from him was how pained he had looked when she had chosen to stay behind, in the Lecter house, at Hannibal’s request, rather than leave with Uncle for Japan after Lady Murasaki’s death. She still recalled the clouded dawn of that morning, the crispy wind rolling dead leaves in waves, the whisper of the fields and the orchards around them. She had heard them every other morning for the many years after when she had stayed there alone.

She slept, her head against the window. It was early morning when the driver woke her. She stepped out of the car and observed the house. It was large, but nothing like the manor of Lecter estate. It had bright white walls and guards posted near every exit, not visibly armed. She had heard them talk in Japanese. The words felt foreign on her tongue when she had thought of what to say back to them if spoken to. Later, she tried speaking out loud alone in her room and it came out strangely, she thought, until she realized she expected her voice to be much younger than now.

With an extended hand and silence, a slim man invited her into the dining room. It wasn’t unlike the small dining room she had kept at the Lecter house, only furnished with newer materials and dustless. A warm glow came from outside through small windows. She knelt wordlessly on a snug but smooth zabuton and stared at Uncle, sitting opposite her.

He had changed. Gone were the coat, jacket and gloves he had worn at the prison, replaced with a black kimono he had wrapped neatly over an unwrinkled white shirt. Chiyoh sat on one end of the table, him at the other, there was a third seat between them, with an empty bowl and cup of tea before it. When she had seen him, she had thought he was coming to help her. Help her do what exactly, it was not entirely fixed in her mind. 

“Do you know where he is?” he asked her.

Her fingers were holding the cup of tea and felt the warmth through the porcelain. It reminded her of childhood. “There are only so many places he can be.”

“Was he wounded?”

“Maybe much more than he believed possible.”

Uncle poured tea for himself, then in the third cup between them. “Hannibal is bones, nerves and feelings, just like us.” He extended his hand to his right and let it down on the table, opened, as if he waited for someone to take it.

“Did you come to kill him?”

Uncle Lecter turned to his right and the place where their third guest would sit. Chiyoh’s eyes went to the space above the cushion, where Uncle believed a body was, breathing, gleaming with life. She wondered who it could be, but as soon as the question took shape, it reversed into its answer.

“We just want to talk with him,” Robertas Lecter said.

 

* * *

 

Morgan insisted on spreading peanut butter himself on his toasts that morning. Margot let him do and their son ate his flattened peanut butter toasts, taking the crumbs from the plate to his mouth with his thumb, one by one.

“What did he say?” Margot asked her.

Blinking her thoughts away, Alana placed her coffee cup down. The sun gleamed on the rim. “He asked for more than the last time,” she said.

Margot shrugged. “But he said yes?”

“Of course he did. He’s done it before, he’ll do it again,” Alana said. “Things grow in a circle. .”

Morgan had run off to his room. He was about to get dressed. Today was the day he rode the horse with mommy. “Last time you did most of it,” Margot pointed out.

“I told him everything I knew about Hannibals’s lifestyle.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Now, I have no idea what he’ll be doing.”

Already dressed in her rider attire, Margot listened to her son running upstairs from the bathroom to his room. Her braided hair hung beside her neck. She looked the same as when Alana had seen her first. And yet everything was different, now. She was no longer a prisoner, was no longer hunted after on the grounds that were hers but that she couldn’t own. There was a glimmer of freedom in her eyes. Hannibal didn’t scare her as much as Mason had.

She got up to lean by Alana’s side, against the counter. “He can’t be doing things so differently. You used to say he was a creature of habit.”

“Aren’t we all?” Alana said. “Until the habits eat away our minds.”

“Some people know the habits of others better than they know themselves,” Margot said, wrapping her fingers around her wife’s over the porcelain cup. “Hannibal Lecter is human, after all. He needs sleep, meds, clothes. Love. Fresh air. Like all of us.”

“And food,” Alana said, “And money.” When the private investigator had suggested to monitor the bank accounts, Alana had told him Hannibal had too many. Even the accountants hired by the state attorney’s office could not come up a definite number. It was anywhere between ten and thirty, only three of them not offshore, two of those in Switzerland. The man had said that he would try it anyway. Alana had felt like her life was scrambling away under her feet.

 

* * *

 

On the couch in Bedelia’s room, Will opened his eyes. Sun flooded in. He tried to sit up as best he could, leaning on his left arm. It ached too, in the muscles, not a good ache, only a deep one. Somehow, Will hoped it wouldn’t stop, to remind him of what he had done and could do.

The only clear thought was the wish to leave this place.

It was only when he tried to focus that he noticed the shadow on his right, at the end of the couch. It was standing. The gun’s barrel shone darkly, its open mouth aimed at Will’s head. Will’s vision refused to clear. Chiyoh’s voice emerged from the blurred silhouette.

“If you still want to die,” it said. “It could be arranged.”

He lifted a hand to wrap it around the end of the gun. “Do you still want to kill me?” he rasped.

The gun didn’t lower, but Chiyoh’s face finally became clear. She seemed tired, in very different clothes than he had seen her last. Her hair was drawn back in a loose bun, with strands falling out on her shoulders. He frowned. There was a specific fatigue in her, it made her skin transparent, her eyes empty. Will could almost see the thoughts moving through her skull, coiling and expanding, then receding, as another took its place. He wondered where the thought of killing him was. “If I had wanted to kill you, you would be dead.”

“Wanting to kill and ending up killing are two very different things,” Will said.

Chiyoh’s eyes went to her right, beside Will and stopped on Hannibal. “Is this how you come to think it’s right to make others kill?”

“I don’t think it’s right.”

“You thought it was right to try and kill him,” she said, tilting her head toward Hannibal.

“Circumstances are sometimes as tightly set as prisons,” Will said. “Dying to the world was the only option available.”

Behind Chiyoh, another silhouette stood in the shadows, near the door. Will sat up and brought his eyes to the man. He was slim, slightly taller than Hannibal. Their resemblance was not as striking physically as it was in bearing. Count Lecter was as graceful as could be, detached and elevated. There was a distinct feeling about him that he was not entirely earthly. It was the same litheness that Hannibal himself bore, but only, in him, it was covering a strong, underlying violence. Now that Hannibal had gotten up from bed and walked to his uncle, the contrast was as clear as day. If there was anything angelical in the Lecters, Hannibal had inherited only the calling to things of beauty and perfection, and underneath he had remained fire that breathed and moved. “And the world refused your deaths?” Robertas Lecter asked.

“Perhaps it hadn’t yet taken an acceptable shape,” Hannibal replied. He turned to Chiyoh. “Are we leaving?”

Chiyoh’s eyes stayed on Will. She did not lower the gun.

Hannibal stepped forward and softly laid his hand where the scope met the barrel. He motioned to Will. “He’s coming with us,” he said, pressing gently. She turned to him, her eyes faintly glistening, then put the gun down and slung it back on her shoulder.

 

* * *

 

_It was easier than Will had thought to ignore Hannibal in the courtroom. During the first hearing, he was shackled and held in a glass box. A few weeks later, when Will returned for the rest of his testimony, Hannibal was bound in a straight jacket with a mask not unlike Will’s own. His feet were cuffed together and attached to the floor before the chair. Something must have happened in prison, but Will purged the thought from his mind.  
_

_Behind the mask, Hannibal’s eyes were closed. Will did not really need to look to make sure they would stay closed. He did not feel them on him._

_The questions surrounding his testimony went on. Eventually, they asked him about the destruction of proofs, Hannibal Lecter’s journals and patient records, containing information on numerous individuals who had possibly been manipulated under his psychiatric care, if not murdered. You helped in the destruction of these. He said yes._

_When the break came, Will was escorted out. He was brought to a section of the courthouse where he didn’t have to avoid the reporters and journalists. It was closed off, had bulletproof windows and seemed deserted except for a few security guards, discussing types of coffee grinds. Even then, Will felt watched. Hannibal was in the building and the walls watched him._

_He turned right into a corridor that led to the restrooms. There were a few vending machines, giving off a surreal glow, blue and white. He remembered the bottle of water he had bought for Abigail, on their way to Minnesota. When he thought that killing Garret Jacob Hobbs was one moment in his life, an island that would diminish in the distance as time would advance. Instead, it had grown into a country, then a continent, then roads and cities and provinces had formed that Will had discovered to be in his own heart._

_He touched his hand to the vending machine wall. It was fresh on the surface and pulsing with the warmth of the mechanism inside. Will closed his eyes, tempted to rest his forehead against the coolness. Sometimes, he still believed his brain was on fire and wondered why had this not consumed him entirely._

_Slow, measured steps made him turn his head. They came from the right and grew nearer until an elegant, tall man was revealed._

_The closer he got to Will, the more obvious it became._

_“Mr. Graham,” the man said. “Can we talk?”_

_Will ignored the question. The voice was doubtlessly similar. “From your accent and your likeness-…”_

_He stepped forward and extended a hand. “Robertas Lecter.”_

_“No. We can’t. Talk.” Will skirted around him and left. He liked the reporters and the journalists better._

 

* * *

 

Clarice came back from her run and tugged her sweater off, collapsing to the ground in the hall. Panting, she sagged against the wall, legs drawn against her chest, trying to think. She tried to do what she had learned to do, do what she knew better than anyone how to do. Put the pieces together until an image took shape that was clear enough for her to find more pieces, feed it, give it life.

She tilted her head back against the wall. Her breathing, rushed from running, was slowing down. But inside, she was falling apart. In this puzzle, she didn’t even know which parts were pieces and which parts were not.

Ardell found her like this. She had dozed with her forehead to her knees. She wasn’t hurt, she didn’t throb.

He sat down beside her. She didn’t know how long she had stayed like this. Sweat had dried on her skin and her cheeks were stiff with tears. She felt dirty, covered in scabs and not knowing if they hitched because they were healing or because they were becoming infected. “I saw Will Graham,” she said, eventually, eyes closed.

“Alive, you mean?”

She nodded and bit her lip. “Clear as day. Wounded. Looked like he’d been stabbed.”

“You need to tell Crawford about it.”

“I know,” she said.

“This isn't your job.”

She opened her eyes and looked straight at him. “I’m fine.”

He nodded, then got up and helped her to her feet. “You stink. Get a shower.” He paused. “I may also have looked at your files.” Clarice looked at him, alarm and anger rising up, tensing her shoulders. “As an apology, I think I found them. The two that don’t belong.”

Clarice ran her hands over her face and tried to focus her mind on one thing. But she found none. They all danced in front of her eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three sentences from the last section are ripped from the last paragraph of Harris's _Hannibal_ 's part 1, chapter 3.


	21. 21.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late night posting. But this day. God this day. o___0
> 
> Fearing that this story may appear self-involved, I wrote up [this post](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/post/147167536394/ive-been-pretty-much-haunted-with-the-sentiment). It's mostly about the structure of it as a whole. It'll also probably make more sense once all chapters will be posted.

Bedelia waited for them downstairs, dressed in black, a large silk shawl hugging her shoulders. One of Lecter’s Japanese guards helped Will on the way down. He felt the tight grip on his arm, not allowing him to miss a step, nor permitting him to leave or step out of line. Will felt suddenly incredibly tired, as if he was held in the solid clasp of the things that controlled him, with nowhere to go and no thoughts in his mind. As if he could just let it all go now, seep through the pores of his skin and watch himself from above.

He walked past Bedelia and stopped. “I found my phone,” she explained, with a graceful tilt of her head.

“So I figured,” he said. “You are becoming a specialist in escaping what I can’t seem to avoid.”

“Is that meant to say something of me, or of you?”

Will found it hard to focus on her face. Her features seemed to blur in a swirl of colors and the silk of her shawl looked like a cocoon around her. “It could say I’m reckless and you’re cowardly.”

“Or that I am careful to find an exit and that you just wanted a way in,” she said, holding out her hand, poised like for a kiss. Will smiled and stepped away.

Hannibal came to her, his uncle at his side. He bowed his head slightly. “Thank you,” he told Bedelia. “For your help and your care.”

“It has been a pleasure. As always.”

“Have you chosen a recipe?”

Something froze in Bedelia’s face, as if she had never believed that they would really come to this. But it disappeared quickly. It could not be the first time she had thought her death was near and had then slipped out of its fingers. “As a matter of fact, I have,” she said. “The Kalua lamb roast. From your letter of last Easter.”

Hannibal cocked his head, a minute frown clouding his brow. “Why, if I may ask?”

“It surprised me.” She eyed Robertas Lecter at Hannibal’s side, as if, Will thought, his presence warranted her safety. “I found it to be outside your usual tastes.”

“You have, on the contrary, experienced my tastes to be unusual,” Hannibal said.

Bedelia moved closer to him. For a moment, Will saw the thought crossing her mind, flickering there like a bird fighting the wind with powerful wings, that she could kiss him. She slowly raised on the tips of her heels. Hannibal tilted forward slightly and deliberately clicked his jaw, with a small noise that most resembled the snapping of teeth. Bedelia’s eyes took on a quiet frown, went to his lips, then back to his eyes and she drew back as quietly as she had come up. “Not to imply you could lack originality, but after a while there are some things I have come to expect.”

She turned to Count Lecter. He took her hand and touched his lips to her knuckles, placid. “Doctor Du Maurier,” he greeted her.

“Count Lecter,” she said.

Outside, two cars waited for them. Count Lecter climbed in the first with Hannibal. Before the door closed on him, his eyes sought Will’s: they were not entirely unquiet, holding the mix of surprise and excitement that was closest to enjoyment in this man, along with something else, something unexpected and dark, that Hannibal had thought would remain forgotten.

Will was brought to the other car. Chiyoh helped him slide in his seat at the back, then sat beside him, her rifle in the small case at her side. “I hope you know what you are doing,” she told him.

In the front seats, the driver and guard remained quiet. “I feel like I should ask you that,” Will said.

 

* * *

 

At Quantico, Clarice had gone straight for Jack’s office, ignoring the comings and goings of students rushing to their first class, gathering in front of the large board where results were displayed like public admonitions. She closed the glass door behind herself and made sure it was entirely shut before walking in further.

Jack stilled at his desk. She had come in unannounced. He gave her a brief quizzical look.

“I saw Will Graham,” she said in a breath.

Jack stiffened, like a mountain would, and exhaled slowly. Whatever it was in him that was still hopeful, Clarice saw it rupture. For a moment, he stared down at his hands on his desk, leaning on them faintly. Then he closed the file before him, put the cap on his pen and rose. “Have you been to the Clover running path recently? We’ve extended it to the west. I was pushing to have it included in the standard run for the physical training. Might not happen now.” He turned to her. “We used to say we’d keep running together sometimes. We never did.”

Clarice frowned. Either Jack thought his office could be bugged, which could be true, or he didn’t want to speak to her about Will here. “No. I usually do the east path.”

“Try the Clover with me,” he said. “For old times’ sake.”

 

* * *

 

The young woman changed into the standard FBI work-out sweater and sweat pants. They felt oversized and clumsy. She preferred her own clothes. Trainees going on with their routines eyed them curiously, their looks turning to cold respect when Crawford met their eyes. He seemed older in the loose gray sweat shirt. It brought out the white clouding his hair at the temples.

They started running in silence, falling in a familiar rhythm. They tried to avoid the snow muddying the path, but soon their shoes were covered in sticky cold earth. Clarice’s legs were still tense from her run of this morning, from standing stiff and nervous in Graham’s presence, from running home, much faster than she should have, not afraid, but tired, so tired of discovering that what Prurnell had said was only a superficial investigation was in fact a labyrinth of lies, deceptions and hidden doors.

Jack motioned for her to slow down. They were into the woods, at a straight line, and would be able to see eventual runners coming their way from both directions. She leaned on a tree to stretch her legs, while waiting for them both to stop panting.

“Where?” Jack asked, finally.

She swallowed, saliva thick in her dry mouth. “At Lecter’s house, on Chandel Square.”

“What were you doing there?”

She shook her head. “I was trying to clear my head,” she said. “It’s just a crime scene, Jack.”

“It’s not any crime scene.” They started walking again, not wanting the cold of early winter to lodge in the sweat on their skin. “Did you speak to him?”

She nodded. “He said he was there to get clothes. He took cash that was hidden in a painting in the bedroom.”

“That’s all?”

She paused, brushed off a piece of dry leaf that had stuck to her sweater. “I showed him the picture we received.”

Jack took a deep breath, brow furrowing. He had never looked more tired, like he would have run forever. “What did he say?”

“He said it was the Marlows’ murder. That it was a Francis Dolarhyde case,” she said. “That there'd be something there.”

Crawford stopped in his tracks. Clarice and him stood motionless in the muddied path, their shoes covered in earthy sludge, cold, cloggy. “Okay,” he said, running a hand over his eyes. Their breaths drew patterns of mist in the air. “Go to the Marlows' house are check it out.”

Clarice thought of pointing out she was only an internal investigator. That she wasn’t allowed to open or lead investigations on her own, much less reopen old cases. But then Jack would ask her why she had not reported seeing Graham. Her answer wouldn’t fit the criteria. He hadn’t seemed threatening. She should have followed him, to the best of her capacity. She should have stopped him. She had not acted to restrain a witness in an open murder investigation.

So she did the only thing she could: she nodded. “I’ll go tonight.”

Steps heavy in the crisp dead leaves, they started running again. “Will,” Jack started, breath beginning to grow short. “How was he?”

“In bad shape,” she breathed. “He looked angry that someone was there. Like he wanted to dissolve into thin air. But he couldn’t.”

Jack was silent for the rest of their run. Clarice felt the thoughts ticking and clicking, already setting to a solution. They took the southward path on their way back and soon met other runners. Students and trainees mostly, some instructors and groups, all of them puffing, breathings clingy and damp.

 

* * *

 

They rode for hours. North, as far as Will could tell. They followed the coast for some time, then went inland when population became denser. The windows of the car remained shut and so Will couldn’t hear anything of the sea rumbling outside, not that it would have felt good, he reflected. Perhaps it would be better if he never heard anything at all. And through the haze of painkillers, everything had blurred together. The car was a silent, floating bubble separating him from the world and he knew, now, that it was a good thing for him to be sheltered away.

In the middle of the afternoon, they started going west on narrower roads. When the sun’s rays hit the trees vertically, the cars began to slow down. They stopped at an unfrequented crossing. Two long lines traced a unique car path that veered east. Dandelions and stinking chamomile had grown through the road’s gravel. Their frozen remains persisted through licks of snow. Some flowers were still open. The nauseating smell of the chamomile was carried on and off by the wind, layered with the fresher one of the dandelions, bathing them in a scent of dying sweetness.

Chiyoh got out of the car wordlessly. Will followed her and watched as she settled her case down on the car’s trunk to pull the parts of her rifle out and started putting them together, motions swift, her head turned to the woods around them. Eventually, she stared at Will and silently pointed him at a space where the forest cleared up. He could see the fields after the leafless trees.

Robertas Lecter had left his own car and entered the woods, followed and preceded by his Japanese suite. “From here on, we walk,” Chiyoh told him.

Lifting a hand to his hair, Will felt their ends, sticky in his own hands, covered in the sweat his body seemed to produce only by exasperation of its pain and hurt. Hannibal had got out of the car he had shared with his uncle as well. He was waiting for Will near the woods.

They walked side by side. The setting sun’s light made the trees seem rusty, like aged, gigantic spears of metal.

“Am I expected to understand what’s going on?” Will said, once they had lost sight of the cars behind them.

“This situation in particular?” Hannibal said. “Or the broader picture?”

Will snorted. Hannibal’s face had paled. He looked strained, the skin a faint gray in the sunlight. “Did he tell you anything?”

“No. Did Chiyoh speak with you?”

“I don’t think she knows what’s going on either,” Will said.

Holding a group of low branches together so they didn’t slap wildly in Will’s way, Hannibal kept his eyes over Will’s shoulder. Two more men had come up behind them, their step loose in the snow, chatting quietly. They were dressed in immaculate black suits with dark silk at the hems and mandarin collars. From time to time, one of them fidgeted with something in his pocket, revealing the holster at his side. “It’s another proof that we have died: vultures are here to feast on our dead flesh.”

Will frowned as the words went to his chest and twisted hooks in the beating heart there. “We’re not quite dead flesh.”

“And even in death, flesh fights until it gets what it wants.”

They had reached the field. Snow had melted into mud in most places. Will wore one of Hannibal’s jackets he had retrieved from his house. It fit squarely on his shoulders and the sleeves went down to his palms. “Do you know what he wants?”

Hannibal paused. His eyes settled on Chiyoh, far ahead of them, up to her waist in tall grass. “He wants to know if I killed my aunt. His wife,” he said.

Will stopped in his tracks and turned. Before him, Hannibal inhaled and exhaled painstakingly, hair splattered on his forehead, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow from the exhaustion of the walk. His eyes shone like life wanted to come out of them. “Did you?”

For a moment, the scales moved behind Hannibal’s eyes, weighing the truth of his answer. “I watched her die,” he said. Then something within him drifted away and he walked past Will.

In front of them, hundreds of yards away, there was a house, all white, with a tiny strip of road leading to it.

For a moment, Will swayed. The dying grass around them was real, the house as well was real, if far. He wondered how long it would take for things to start lacking reality again. He followed Hannibal, and their wounds were light at their sides, burning as if the flesh was trying to open up.

 


	22. 22.

The house was the same as the one in the picture. There was the bright red door that told of the happiness and enthusiasm of the newly weds and their first home. The long dark-green porch with the lunar white of its fence.

The taxi left Clarice on the opposite side of the street. She felt like everything except an FBI agent, more like a tourist on a murder scene. She swallowed and did her best to pretend the image had not come to her mind. On her right, the sun was setting, turning the shapes of houses on the empty street into hues and ghosts.

Getting inside the house was easy. The seal was broken already. She slipped her gloves on and turned the door knob. After a loud click, the door opened slowly, as if the house was breathing in.

She had her gun with her this time and at least half of her expected Will Graham to be there. Or Hannibal Lecter. Who knew? She shook that thought off as well and focused, arms raised, shoulders braced for the recoil already. Always feel the tension in your arms, her shooting instructor used to say, just like if you’d already fired. That way you won’t be surprised when you pull the trigger and you’ll go with the bullet.

Her steps echoed in the empty rooms. Some furniture was left, with clothes draped over a couch and TV set on her right.

All traces of the investigation were long gone. From the file she had looked at before coming here, she knew that the discolored splashes on the wall were blood splatter, was aware to check the stairs where the bullets had entered the wood after going through Mr. Marlow’s torso.

She lowered the gun in quiet disbelief. It was clearly Dolarhyde now. The pieces came together with less elegance, the idea was blurrier, common. It seemed sketchy and stuttered, but it was him alright.

Clarice searched the house thoroughly, starting with the rooms upstairs.

On her way back down, she regretted not insisting for Jack to come with her. Graham had specified he should be there. There was obviously something she was missing. She didn’t like to be left in the dark and she was beginning to dislike the darkness that Graham propagated around himself.

She had given up entirely and was on her way out, when she noticed it on the windowsill. The sun had set now and the light of day turned to amber. A few more minutes, she thought, and she could have missed it.

It was pale, bent at the elbow, the tiny hand turned toward the glass, as if waving.

 

* * *

 

The door to the room Will had been brought in was locked from the outside. And now he held his breath, poised, listening to the steps going down the corridor. He had barely been spoken to. They had entered through a door on the side of the house. It led to a hall, then to a study with well-ordered books, flower arrangements in vases and tall chairs in a black wood that looked like ebony.

Three men had taken Hannibal to the left and Will had walked on. Behind his eyes, as two more guards helped him up the stairs, _he had seen Hannibal’s body go to the floor, on his knees, his head bent backward at an odd angle and the sound, thick and warm, of blood gushing out, like a cascading river. Robertas Lecter held the knife and spoke in Hannibal’s voice after, but Will couldn’t make out the words against the loud hum numbing his head_.

He had always thought he would see Hannibal Lecter die, even if that death wasn’t by his own hand, as if their lives were so tightly tangled that anything that could cause death would also force them together. And the grounds whispered suddenly with the possibility of this other life and these other forces, circles of hell he was not to know, rooms in Hannibal’s memory that were perhaps not rooms, but sketchy plans, shaky structures and vast oceans.

In Chiyoh, there was the echo of Abigail, the solitude of the Lecter manor collapsing over them both, the rotting leaves covering the floors of Hannibal’s mind. Here, Will found nothing.

He stayed in bed, trying to hear the noises of the house. Someone walking, occasionally. No voices. No cries. His shoulder throbbed and the pain in his cheek extended into his nose, so that it swelled and receded every time he breathed in and out. He thought of getting up to test the door, try the handle, see if he couldn’t pry the butt hinges, or take the pin out of the knuckles.

But it was too late. The mattress moved like waves carried it, but it was nothing like a boat and Will felt tipped over and flying as his eyes closed.

 

* * *

 

_The Port Haven clinic looked more like a hospital in the small cafeteria. The walls went from wood-panels and tapestry to standard sheetrock painted in a sad yellow. The staff wore hair nets and green scrubs. There was a lonely flower vase on every table. Hannibal ran a finger on a rose petal. It was thin polyester._

_Abigail had told them that no one believed her when she said that she used to hunt with her father, that she had killed, skinned and butchered an animal twice her size and weight._

_“Would you like to hunt again?” Hannibal asked her._

_Abigail smiled and huffed. She twirled the hem of her sleeve between index finger and thumb. “That’s not a good idea.”_

_Will’s eyes stayed on the small carton of chocolate milk Abigail had taken as an afternoon snack. She had not touched it yet. The three of them sat in a corner, him and Hannibal side by side, facing Abigail. “You can like the notion even if it’s not a good idea,” Will said._

_“Like you like to come here even if it’s not a good idea?”_

_Will took his glasses off, let his thumb hover over one branch and he set them down on the table. “It’s beginning to be good, Abigail,” he said, frowning. “It can feel good.”_

_The young woman’s lip twitched and she swallowed the thought that she could be loved and protected again. She turned to Hannibal. “Do you hunt?”_

_“Not any longer,” he said. “But I did when I was young.”_

_“Younger than me?”_

_Dr. Lecter’s voice took on a tone that Will had yet to hear. “There is something striking in witnessing how the things we are allowed to destroy stop living. When I was a child, the horror of it had a magical quality that even anatomical knowledge didn’t entirely quash.”_

_Abigail’s eyes stayed on Will, all this time. When she spoke again, she had Walter’s voice. “Was it too horrible to kill him, or too magical?”_

 

* * *

 

Will woke with a start. He first noticed the light of dawn in the room, then the smell of Hannibal’s clothes that he wore, the remnants of cologne and soap in them, as well as the musty odor of things stored away and forgotten. Then he saw Chiyoh, sitting in an armchair opposite the bed, her hair loosened around her face, like she had slept on them. Her rifle was nowhere in sight and she seemed lost in thought, softer or tired.

“Where’s Hannibal?” Will croaked.

“In a room similar to this,” she said. “Waiting, like you.”

It took all of Will’s strength only to push himself up on his left arm to sit in bed. Chiyoh watched him and didn’t intervene. “Was your childhood like this?” Will asked.

“Like what?”

“Doors locked from the outside. Soundproof walls. Passive silence and aggressive containment,” he listed. “Waiting.”

Chiyoh turned away and got up to remove the jacket she still wore. “You mean Hannibal’s childhood.”

She made her way to the bed and sat on the edge, closer than Will would have thought. As she settled down in the sheets, Will examined her face. It was hard to tell how old she was, really. She was still detached in most things, used to removing herself, maybe. “Aren’t they the same in many aspects?”

Taking hold of his right arm, she pulled firmly but slowly until it unfolded from where it was, curled against Will’s stomach. The pain flared again, renewed as if the blade had just pierced the flesh. Will wondered what he would do when the pain would be gone, when all traces of the fight would have dissipated, when he would be himself again, if there would be such a thing. “Why don’t you ask him these things?” she said.

Chiyoh held Will’s hand first and straightened his fingers until all of them were open, quivering like they held the heaviest things in the world. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“He would suppose you can figure it out,” she said, keeping the fingers stretched out. “And you can.”

Will panted until the young woman finally let go of his hand. It fell back at his side, flesh tingling, muscles still cramped. “I could want to know how he feels about it,” he said through clenched teeth.

For a moment, Chiyoh let his hand rest, then she took it back. “You don’t know a lot, except how he feels about you.”

“For a while, I didn’t know that. Now, whenever I look at him, there is only an emotion, tall, bright and terrifying. And the world it gives shape to is gone, lost in the contrast,” he said. Chiyoh’s lips flattened in the beginning of a smile. She straightened his fingers again. “How many times are you going to do that?”

“Today, at least ten. More if you can take it.” Pain bloomed in Will’s palm as it was opened, relentlessly. He pursed his lips and toughed it out. “Next week, we’ll start with your elbow.”

“You aren’t waiting for the wound to close?” he panted.

She met his eyes briefly and maintained his hand between hers. He could not have fought her if he had tried. “You would benefit from the use of both your arms.”

“To escape?” he stuttered.

Chiyoh paused. When she let go of his hand, this time, the pain licked all the way to his shoulder and chest. His hand was ragged clothing, its blood was fire and the tendons and veins were a cage holding the flutter of wings inside. “What are you expecting?” she asked him.

She helped Will lie back against the pillow. “For Robertas to kill Hannibal.”

“Killing is not always the only option.”

“The reverse could happen too, I suppose,” Will said. “Or Hannibal could manipulate you into doing it.”

She stiffened slightly, like the thought had seized her. “Or you could,” she said. She took his hand again, but didn’t press down on it yet. “Death is tiring, isn’t it? It drains and cripples, especially when it’s not your own.”

Will nodded, cheek into the pillow. The cotton pulled on the stitches. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m tired.”

“You don’t appear to be,” she said. “Not yet.” Her fingers circled his wrist. “Do it yourself. One finger at a time.”

Will managed to extend his thumb and index finger, but the middle fingers brought pain like an invading gust of air, down to his gut. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he managed.

She huffed and kept her eyes on his hand as she fanned out the fingers herself, listening to his quickened breathing. “A lot more.”

 

* * *

 

It was near midnight when Agents Zeller and Price arrived. The first man’s hair was ruffled from sleep, the second one carried four coffees in a cup tray. They joined Clarice and Jack near the table where they had both been scrutinizing the doll arm in the plastic bag. Except for the examination lamp’s eerie pyramid of light, the room around them faded into a mix of black and luminescent shards of light against metal.

Jack tossed back the cold coffee in his former cup and switched it for the new one Price brought. Zeller looked at the arm. “It’s a barbie doll arm,” he said flatly. “This was at the Marlows’ house?”

Clarice nodded. “I found it around nine. I’m waiting to hear back from the lab upstairs. They’re supposed to tell me the make, model and year.”

Zeller leaned down on crossed arms, bringing his nose nearly against the evidence bag. “Nice catch on the old Marlow case.”

Tempted to take her eyes to Jack at her side, Clarice just took them down and shrugged. “Familiar red door.”

The faint thud of Jack’s cup on the table seemed to indicate he had made up his mind. “I want Miriam Lass under surveillance. Not her phone and computer. Keep to the surface. Do this quietly.”

Price arched his eyebrows. “Everyone knows she lost an arm. Could be anyone. Who would come after her now?”

Zeller followed Jack’s train of thought slightly faster. “Think she did it?”

“I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to think,” Jack said. “What I want to know is what she thinks.”

“Could be a coincidence,” Price said.

Clarice shook her head. “It was on display. The dust around it was undisturbed. There was no evidence of a break-in, except for the broken seal,” she said. “No fingerprints, no latex smudges.”

Jack closed his eyes and searched the bottom of his cup, as if it would speak truths out loud, while everything around had been smudged into despair and haze. “Just get the authorization. While I can still ask for one.”

 

* * *

 

On the next morning, Hannibal found the door of his room open. Slipping carefully out of bed, he investigated the closet. It held pale shirts, trousers and jackets in a thick silk, but he could not put them on alone, not with the bandage dotted in red at his side. He pursed his lips and smoothened the wrinkled sleeves on the sweater that held still the smell of sleep and wounds.

Downstairs, he met no one until he reached the dining room. The desert house was clear, filled with sunlight that he had not really seen it seemed in years. Even in his mind, the light of the outside would never remove the coolness of his prison cell. And the rooms of his memory had grown clouded, darker and darker as he grew used to them and there was no need to see any longer.

Tea was served. His uncle waited for him. The angles in his face were sharper than Hannibal remembered. There was a repetitive tremor in his right hand, that turned into a twitch on occasions, indicating the first stage of a mild muscular disorder. As Hannibal sat down, Robertas poured tea in his cup, then Hannibal’s, then the third one, that sat between them.

For a time, Hannibal considered the mist forming and losing its shape above the third cup. His uncle drank in silence.

Hannibal got up from where he knelt, legs petrous under him, and bent down to remove the tea cup and plate from the empty place setting. He brought them to a nearby chest, set them down and returned to his place. His tea was still warm. The handleless cup fit in the center of his palm like a small heart.

“She would have liked to know you became a doctor,” Robertas said.

The other man nodded, thinking of life that vanished from eyes that stared into his own, from very close. It started in the center, no larger than a needle prick and it extended to the periphery, chasing all the light until focus entirely disappeared and the orbs had become like the sky, mocking and alien. “Yes,” he approved. “She would.”

His uncle closed his eyes briefly and none of them spoke after that.

 

* * *

 

_“They have this therapy game where we need to talk to dead persons,” Abigail said. She sat with Will at the solid wood table in his kitchen. The house was cold and unlit, all furniture removed, except for where they were. Her features were gray and pale and she was less memory than dream, flimsy. Often, she transformed into others. Her father. Randall Tier._

_“You have to play this game?”_

_She snorted. “It’s insulting,” she said. “For the dead. I shouldn’t bring them back, even just in my head.”_

_He smiled and crossed his hands on the table. “True,” he approved. He wore the plaid shirt he had put on after Hannibal had brought him back here, but his skin was clean, unscarred. “Even if interaction can be therapeutic.”_

_She turned away. “If I’m insane, how am I supposed to become less insane by acting like it?”_

_The Wolf Trap house was one place he found himself more often into. Hannibal’s office in Baltimore was mostly forgotten, save for the moments it held, pockets of litheness near the burning fire, the echo of dark in the color of wine and Hannibal’s absence. “In theory, for some people, addressing the dead assigns them reality and prevents denial.”_

_Abigail paused. There were tears in her eyes. This was no memory, only the weight of fear. Will could never really separate her image from the ones of others. He had become afraid he was losing her, then he had become reassured at the thought that he wouldn’t lose her without losing himself. “I don’t deny what I’ve done,” she whispered._

 


	23. 23.

 

* * *

 

 _Marouflage_ (n.): The way a painted canvas is attached with glue to a surface or mounted on one, to become a mural or be publicly displayed.

 

* * *

 

_His first idea had been to find something like his old knife, but this was nothing like it. It was light, fit nicely in his palm. It would be easy to hide, if need be. He would keep it on him at all times. Taped to his skin during storms. Always have a knife, his father had said, to make sure you can cut ropes that’ve got you. A knife for street thugs, if it weren’t for the neat black shine to it._

_“Blades are simple matter,” the man behind the counter had told him. “When it ain’t about hunting, then you choose. Harm or speed. Which one’s for you?”_

_Will nodded. “Speed, most likely.” He'd take care of the harm, wouldn't he?  
_

_“Self-defense, uh?”_

_Another slow nod, another vast lie. “It’s for a friend, actually.”_

_Walking out, Will wondered if it was like this for Hannibal. If every weapon was personal, or if it just became intimate afterwards. On his way out of the shop, he bought wine._

_He drank it on his porch, alone, as the late afternoon turned into an evening that cast a sinking glow over the Wolf Trap fields. He wondered what his dogs would think._

 

* * *

 

In the mornings, Chiyoh came to eat with him and they worked on his arm for some time. It was difficult for Will to tell how long the sessions lasted: there were no clocks here, but if he trusted the sun, it must have been around an hour. Then someone would bring him lunch, then dinner. Everyone else than Chiyoh spoke Japanese when talked to and, soon, he stopped asking and thanked them with a nod. They were always polite, smooth and armed. When they left, they slid the lock on his door back into place. From the sound, it was heavy and well-oiled.

It should have worried him and somewhere, down in the aching muscles and wrung nerves of his body, where his mind echoed with a perpetual scream that filled his head like white noise – it did. In the first days, the haze of painkillers was stronger than it used to be. He didn’t know what he was on now. The nameless glass IV tubing felt cold against his skin. Chiyoh had shaved the hair on his left forearm to attach the cannula to the skin with tape, binding it into place so they wouldn’t detach.

And finally, when the blur began to fade, it was only to be replaced with a mix of despair and hope, like lead threading through his body. He felt as if he had thrown himself down into the pit and was now standing at the bottom, looking up at the open sky above, both content to be there and at peace to just look at the white world of living, as it slowly started to be out of focus.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw faces becoming clouds and decomposing into memories. He remembered Molly laughing, but he couldn’t be sure what was her and what was the laugh. He didn’t know why he didn’t miss it exactly. The memory just tightened his chest into hurting, hardening it into stone, but everything inside was still beating.

Somewhere near the fifth or sixth day, he managed to start telling time properly. When he reached the twentieth day, he started walking around his room, pacing silently from the bed to the en-suite bathroom (which tiny window could not be opened more than five inches wide). The cut in his right thigh was almost healed, but he still couldn’t run even if there was need.

Except the bed, there were two armchairs in the corners, a drawer chest that held clothes he only managed to put on himself after painstaking efforts. Opposite the door was a window, which showed nothingness in the bright, abstract shapes of a field, gold and pale green, graying sometimes with snow and rain, and the sky above, blue, then magenta, then black, or gray, all day. Above the bed was another window, with an inner courtyard below, where small paths of gravel snaked in flowers and grass. Both were locked.

His mind was not restless. It felt hard to move around in his own head, like if a thought stirred somewhat, all would shatter. He heard steps outside in the corridor sometimes. Once he thought he heard Hannibal’s, but he may very well have been dreaming, because the bed felt like a prison cot and the room seemed to have bars and smell of mold.

The next time he saw Hannibal, they had been here for almost five weeks.

Will was sleeping, dreaming of Walter, _two weeks ago had been Molly and Will’s first anniversary, on the same day that the Maryland State court set a trial date for Hannibal Lecter. Walter threaded a fish hook on an earthworm. It had been refrigerated and didn’t struggle much. “Mom said I don’t have to call you dad,” he said, wiping his fingers clean._

_“Will’s just fine,” Will said. “You have a dad and it’s not me. And that’s okay.”_

_“Except if I wanted to. And I want to.”_

_Will smiled and handed the boy the lid to the worms jar. “Then dad it is,” he said._

_They went out to the lake. Molly had stayed in bed that morning. They took the longer way around, the one that took them through a patch of woods. Among the trees, only twelve feet away, Abigail walked with them, flickering in the corner of Will’s eye. He was happy she was there, happy with a happiness that made his bones feel like dust._

_Walter didn’t often call him dad, even then._ _He mostly did it with his mother and, Will thought, maybe just for her benefit._

He woke to the sound of the door opening. He pushed back the blanket and lifted himself on his left elbow, in less pain than yesterday. He was off the drip now.

Chiyoh walked in and placed the tray on the bedside table. It had Will’s usual, still mostly liquid breakfast, tea, water for the pills, fruit _compote_ and soaked oatmeal. The golden lining on the cup gleamed in the sunny morning.

Then the young woman left without a glance. And Hannibal came in, the door closing after him, with the lock clicking into place. He considered Will and Will sat up straighter in bed. He listened to his own breathing as he let himself be watched. Hannibal went to sit down in the armchair near the window and something warm collected in Will’s chest, between the shoulder blades. The older man’s hair had grown. It was almost as long as it used to be, and it was combed.

Will reached for his cup of tea and blew on it. The mist swirled away from him, as the heat kept curling in his chest. “Five weeks, right?”

“I counted 33 days,” Hannibal approved. He curled and uncurled his fingers on his crossed legs, his eyes drawn back to Will, soft and unworried, as if they weren’t both in prison here. “A long time to be alone with your thoughts. Let emotions bloom and memories perish. Enough time for some birds to lay an egg, hatch it and see it open.”

“At some degree of depth and murkiness, it’s better to be alone with our thoughts, isn’t it?”

Hannibal leaned back in the chair, much less stiffly than before. The visit could have been authorized by Robertas Lecter, or maybe Chiyoh’s help had been required. “For all our similarities, there are only so many things we can properly share.”

Setting his tea cup back on the tray, Will recalled that there were many things Hannibal didn’t want him to know. “Words don’t do justice to everything. Most of the time, they don’t carry justice at all,” Will said. “You know everything there is to know about me. You don’t need to ask.”

The light that came through the drawn curtains was soft and white. Hannibal got up and pulled them open so that a sliver of clear light came in. “Words are an affair that happens between each of us and the world, not between us alone,” he said, his back still turned. “Do you still think of your son?”

Will tilted his head back, searching the corners of his mind with nervous eyes. He swallowed carefully. “If you want to kill them, you can find them on your own, you don’t need me.”

“Would you stop me?”

“Yes. In the constricted set of circumstances that can lead us to think that death can be fully deserved, they don’t deserve it,” Will said. “I’ve removed myself from them for exactly that reason. Because once you knew they existed, you wouldn’t let go.”

“Some things in us are hard to let go of. Hooked too deep.” Hannibal sat on the bed, near Will’s knees. His eyes narrowed. “How old was the boy?”

When Will’s gaze stopped on Hannibal, it could make out curiosity, a faint tinge of enjoyment and the hurt that led to death, lingering, at the very bottom. “How old was your sister when she died?” he whispered.

The hurt grew and diminished, then grew again, like it was breathing. Eventually, Hannibal took his eyes down. “She was 10.”

“Walter is eleven.”

“Have you considered killing my family?”

The images were closer to the surface of his mind than Will would have thought. He had considered hurting Chiyoh. In some scenarios, Hannibal killed them both, in others he let her die because she had already died in many ways. But his hands were too weak, and many things in him shivered at the thought that it could be that easy. It should mean something, at least. “Why?” Will said. “You don’t seem too attached.”

Hannibal gave a quick smile. “I didn’t attempt to see myself in them as hard as you did. Or were they walls to keep the unsightliness of the world out?”

“They were to keep the good in. It tends to just leak out and dissolve, lost drops in ponds of pooling rain,” Will said.

“It does.” Moving closer on the bed, Hannibal motioned for Will to give him his right hand. Will did. His touch was softer than Chiyoh’s. Will blinked slowly as Hannibal turned his palm upward and straightened his arm, holding it at the elbow. “Does it frustrate you that our relationship is unbalanced?”

Will huffed quietly. “It’s always been unbalanced. Profiler and killer. Patient and therapist.”

“Lure and fish.”

“The fish usually eats the lure,” Will pointed out, while Hannibal’s hand tightened around his forearm. Will made a fist, feeling all the muscles from wrist to shoulder stiffen.

“Even if it kills him.” Hannibal’s hand slipped over Will’s fist and kept it balled firmly. “And the fisherman retrieves the lure from its body.” He let go and Will exhaled roughly. He counted five seconds and formed a fist again.

“Except when the lure is alive. Best lures are, or seem to be.”

A soft smile came to Hannibal’s lips. He kept his eyes on the movement in Will’s arm. “And we have now returned to jailer and prisoner.”

Will unclenched his fist for the tenth and last time. “I was not your jailer.”

“Not in the proper sense of the term, as much as I was not ordinary fish.”

“I hadn’t assumed you were,” Will said, between breaths. “And now it has become difficult to say who is jailing whom. You insist on being bound to me. It would be unadvised of me not to use it.”

Hannibal’s fingers went to Will’s elbow and gripped the muscles behind it, eyes on their work. “From a neurological point of view, pain has so much in common with pleasure, sometimes it’s hard to tell what we can be feeling exactly.”

“Do you think of being jailed with me as a form of pain?” Will said, bending his arm at the elbow, as far as it would go.

It didn’t make it past 90 degrees and once it reached that point, Hannibal kept it there. His eyes went up to search for Will’s and he found them waiting for him. “No,” he said. He inched Will’s bent elbow to a smaller angle until the muscles spasmed and Will’s lips went tight and pale. Then he released the limb entirely. “Lift your arm as high as you can,” he instructed.

Will did, putting his head back, eyes on the ceiling. He managed to maintain his forearm almost aligned with the rest, but could not stretch the fingers out and the whole thing shook like it was about to fly apart. “It won’t go higher than this,” he muttered through his teeth.

“Chiyoh has been hard on you,” Hannibal said. He lifted both his arms above his head and held Will’s arm in place, straighter.

“I don’t mind the strain,” Will said. “I could need both my arms.”

“Quite the understatement.”

The pain was vivid. Will stopped staring at his fingers, dark and pulsating against in the white light, and shut his eyes. “We are waiting to heal. Then what?” he asked quietly.

“We will know soon. My uncle has asked us both to dinner tomorrow evening.”

Opening his eyes, Will found Hannibal’s face close to his own. “He didn’t speak with you,” Will realized. “Did you even leave your room?”

Finally, Hannibal let go of his arm. It had grown weak and limp. Will cradled it against his side. “We did speak, but not to his satisfaction. I believe he has changed tactics,” Hannibal said.

“He wants to speak with me.”

A shadow came to Hannibal’s face. “He’s not the only one who wants to speak with you.” He brought both his hands up and pressed his thumb into the flesh of Will’s shoulder. He felt for the scar underneath and placed his finger a little above it. “Tell me when the pain becomes unbearable.”

Will snorted.

Chiyoh didn’t use these words, she just asked him to tell her to stop. He rarely did.

Hannibal’s eyes didn’t let go of his as his thumb bore down into the skin, forcing will to push against it with his torso. Eventually, the pain hallowed Hannibal’s head in a bright flurry. Then it blinded Will and he gasped, “Now.”

 

* * *

 

They were almost at the end of December, but in a pocket of weather so warm, that Jack wore only a jacket, scarf loose around his neck. He had agreed to meet with Freddie Lounds in a park. In front of them, there were empty swings moving with the curt shifts of the wind. The journalist’s hair was held at the back of her head with a clasp. It made her seem serious. “It’s been more than a month, Agent Crawford. I’ve been extensively generous.” She reached into her purse and took out her phone, flipping through images. When she had found the right one, she held it out for him to inspect. “This is the site’s front page. It goes online at eleven PM tonight so it can decently make the cut for the big papers’ morning update.”

Jack took the phone. On the left, the image showed a blurry caption of the sketch a drawing artist had composited based on Lounds’s description of the man who had bailed Chiyoh Kusachi out of prison. On the right, there was surveillance footage from a camera, more than a decade old. They both showed the same man, identified as Robertas Lecter. Tall letters stood above. “A witness of the Dolarhyde failure escapes thanks to the Cannibal’s uncle: what the FBI doesn’t want you to know,” Jack read out loud. “Conspiracy theories are very 2001, Ms. Lounds.”

“We call them click-baiting now,” she replied around a smile. “But it does the job. You should have told me where to find Robertas Lecter.”

“We don’t know where he is,” Jack said. “He owns two houses on the East Coast. Hasn’t been seen there in years. As soon as we shoved for more through his tax records, Metcalf’s people jumped down our throats. And with the OIG all over me, there’s a limit to the push I can give.” He gave Freddie her phone back.

She eyed him carefully. “Jack Crawford, I don’t think you’ve ever plain lied to me,” she said. “But you are. That’s why you sent me off to the Marlow crime scene break-in two weeks ago.”

Jack licked his lips. He had thought Miriam would have been moved to see traces of it in the papers, even tabloids. But they still had nothing. He hadn’t yet had the strength to confront her about it. “We still don’t know who did it. With Will Graham presumed dead,” he worded out. “We have to be careful.” Every sentence felt empty and vain. Clarice had asked him what to make of Graham. He could only tell her to wait. He knew how unsettled she was. She was with Prurnell, right now, handing in her report, based on their interviews. Jack was ready to clean his office.

“It stirred things up a bit,” she admitted, closing her purse and putting it back at her side. “But Will Graham’s admirers are not as vocal and exotic as Hannibal the Cannibal himself.”

“They’re both dead, Freddie.”

She wriggled her eyebrows. Some of her unruly hair fluttered across her face in the warm wind. “But their legend will live on forever. And I wonder what Robertas Lecter has to say about it.”

Jack got up and offered her his hand to shake. She took it. “Take my word for it: all you’re going to get is a lawsuit.”

She smiled her widest smile. “In my line of work, they’re praise for a job well done.”

On his way out of the park, Jack met a young couple. The girl wore a FBI Academy sweater under her short coat. Neither of them seemed to recognize him and Jack mused if he still knew himself that well. He hadn’t told Freddie Lounds that Robertas Lecter’s car had been spotted in New Jersey. The holder of the Lecter family title didn’t own a house there, but there was one under the name of a society that handled his wife’s family’s possessions in Japan. Jack had let that information slide from the file, kept it low and off the records the way he still could.

He hadn’t even mentioned it to Clarice. But he still didn’t know what he planned to do with it.

 

* * *

 

Kade Prurnell considered Clarice Starling’s report. It was stapled in a brown soft binder, contained transcripts of the interviews, Starling’s conclusions and recommendations. Beside it was the flashcard with the digital copy, encrypted. Prurnell got up, circled her desk and took both copies to a filing cabinet. She opened the right folder, tucked them in and slid the drawer shut. It locked with a metallic clunk.

Clarice stood up straighter. “Is anyone even going to read it?” she asked.

Prurnell eyed the cabinet. “Someone like you might. One day,” she said.

This office was nothing like Jack’s. It had the same tones, but the desk was the center and heart of it. The seats faced it, at a good distance. It was better to stand up. “Jack Crawford is going down,” Clarice understood. “And nothing’s going to change that.”

“I like Jack,” Prurnell said. “I do. He’s honest and strong in a way that gives both these qualities great meanings. But there’s no way around this.”

“I was an instrument.”

Scoffing, Prurnell took her pen again. She didn’t look heartless about it. She did care for Jack. “You knew you were. People just never really give that proper credit,” she said. “And then it just hurts.”

Clarice brought both her hands in her back and clasped them there. Her left fingernails dug in the back of her right hand until she felt them break the skin. “Is that all, Ms. Prurnell?”

“No, actually,” Prurnell said, closing the file in front of her and handing it out to Starling. “I’d like you to present Jack with his new assignment.”

She shook her head once. “I don’t have to do that.”

The older woman sighed. “It’s your assignment too. So that’s not a good answer.” She held out the file. It was thin, not beige, but gray, like internal affairs and inspections and downfall and throats cut. It contained simple instructions. Clarice took it with her left hand. The right one, she kept behind her back. Near the wrist, there were two pink indents.

 

* * *

 

_His cell was no longer in the basement, but at the top of the building. Only one guard fit with him and the dolly in the tiny elevator._

_The pale-gray walls and dark oak floors were but a copy of Dr. Chilton’s office. Three more guards came in to untie him from the dolly. Denise steadied him when he stepped down, then undid the straight jacket as the three male guards watched, batons deployed. He was chained to the table and observed his surroundings, until he had the opportunity to tilt his head back and noticed the round skylight above him._

_It was apparently late evening outside. From where he stood, he could see fragments of pink and stripes of gold in the clouds._

_Alana found him like this. “There were no other windows available,” she said._

_Hannibal brought his eyes to her. “This will do admirably.” He gave a short bow of his head. “Thank you.”_

_“You’re welcome,” she said coldly. “What do you see, Hannibal?”_

_He returned to the sight of the sky above. It was blackening now, the reds growing into purples. “Heaven’s chaffing eye cast down unto purgatory.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I've been late to catch up on your comments. A slight plane-acquired air-conditionning bronchitis came in the way last week-end and has been gnawing at me since. Why should planes be flying freezers anyhow? Why don't we all just SAIL to Europe searching for our lost love?
> 
> It goes unsaid that I love all your beauties of words and you as well. :)


	24. 24.

Professor Lass’s class emptied slowly, the students going out like water, drained at either of the two extremities of the large room. It was one of the bigger lecture halls, with a lectern, a stage and tiered seating. A few trainees lingered at the back, while Miriam filled her bag slowly. She liked the bigger classrooms better. From where she stood at the front, the audience was only a blur of shapes, black on black, with the discreet spots of the laptop signs, something like a starry night.

But in her head, it wasn’t night. It was borders and lines, everywhere, with void all around, vague, all forms lost. In her most recurring dream, she turned to her side and saw herself. Her image removed her own eyes, then opened her chest. It was bloodless and fluffy inside, like a pillow. The organs were taken out, one by one, and there were always more. At the end of the dream, Miriam was a floating head, separated from her body, as she had felt so many times.

_“Your eyes are closed, Miriam. Follow my voice.”_

_“I feel like I don’t have eyes or voice,” she said. But she clung to him anyhow and he led her down narrow steps. A ladder, she realized, a metal ladder. She couldn’t understand why her eyes wouldn’t open._

_“You will have even less, but this can be freeing for you.”_

_There was water at the bottom, up to her ankle, stale and foul. “Do you want me to drown?”_

The steps came, peaceful and slow, as a shape detached from the stairs. All students were gone. Miriam saw her from the corner of her eye. Mingling with the memory, the silhouette walked in, peering from the corner of her eye. When it spoke, Miriam wasn’t entirely sure it was real. At first that sentiment was nauseous. Now, as ill or trapped persons do, she could assort and classify the different types of pictures and streaming colors that passed her by.

“Hello, Miriam,” Bedelia Du Maurier said.

Miriam turned away. “I called you.”

The shorter woman stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She wore a simple black suit and held a silk scarf in her hands. It caught Miriam’s eye. “Weeks ago, I know. And you didn’t call me since,” Bedelia said.

“You didn’t return the call.”

Giving a slow nod, Bedelia walked around to the steps that led to the small stage. “I could not at the moment.”

Miriam’s bag was packed. But the strap hung loosely from her fingers. Where had she seen that scarf? “So why are you here now?”

“Because you left a doll arm at a crime scene investigated by Will Graham.”

Pulling the muscles in her left shoulder, Miriam caused a small twitch in the artificial arm. It felt like jerking the chain of a weight. “Jack Crawford asked if it was me,” she said. “I denied it.”

The scarf meshed and unraveled in Bedelia’s hands. “Did he believe you?” she said, her heels echoing now on the hollow space beneath the stage.

Jack’s mouth had twisted slightly. He had asked her only once. She had said no. He had nodded, said goodbye and walked away. The next morning Tattlecrime had the story. “No.”

The older woman came closer and Miriam only had the lectern to put between them. “Am I right in thinking you feel cast in an unfitting role, Professor Lass?”

“This is the FBI, Dr. Du Maurier. You’re lucky to get a role at all. And you have to fight for it.”

“But you can cut it.”

“I can cut it.”

Bedelia set the scarf down on the edge of the lectern. It hung, matte silk intertwined with shimmering thread, patterning flowers and stems, petal and stems, leaves and stems. “Traces of DNA shows that this scarf was worn by Abigail Hobbs,” Bedelia said. “It was found in a room of Hannibal Lecter’s Baltimore residence. But it had been in his possession for years.”

Miriam’s eyes went from the scarf to Bedelia’s calm gaze on her. She couldn’t tell what she hated the most. The hallucinations that made the rest of her life feel like a dream, or the objects, like the scarf, insisting she had seen them, whispering at the back of her mind and always slipping away whenever she turned their way.

“In the hopes of putting us on equal footing, I will tell you why I couldn’t answer your call,” Bedelia said. “Then you can ask me whatever you wish to know about Hannibal Lecter.”

Miriam frowned. “What do _you_ want?”

Reaching for the scarf, Bedelia proceeded to fold it in half, quarters, octants and sixteenths, until it fit in the palm of her hand. “To know what you want. I suspect our wishes could be similar.”

 

* * *

 

Ardell woke up a little earlier than usual, near the end of the afternoon. He had managed to snatch a few hours of sleep when the morning was ending. The light outside was beginning to take on its deeper yellow shades, like it settled in the world, and by the time noon had come with the clarity that made the sky look like glass, they had reached the point where the world's mechanism was well-oiled, with no need to be watched. Those were the emptiest hours of the day and Ardell slept through them, carried by the peace of the outside. At the end of the afternoon, as people returned home from work and sat in idleness, things seized the occasion, stopped stuttering and started into motion.

He showered thinking of the last thread on the forums where someone else had pretended to be Hannibal Lecter. Posts were well-written, with medical knowledge superficial but sufficient to produce an explanation of an obscure murder in 1992, which Ardell had traced to a footnote of a Criminal Psychology thesis. It had seemed like nothing at first. A new user commenting on the discovery of the doll arm, lashing out at Tattlecrime for its treatment of news. It was THO’s forum to moderate and they had not reacted at all. Ardell had contacted them privately and still nothing. He had deleted the posts himself. The usual accusations of paranoia had flared, combusted a few subscriptions, then receded. They were embers now. They would come back later, more posts, more messages. They always did.

Impostors were common, in the shadiest parts of the internet, below the beam of the social networks, hovering on the surface of the dark web, surfing on the hidden wishes and hopes. Ardell knew it when he had started the site. If anyone knew anything about Lecter, he wanted to see it emerge, develop, to foster it, supervise it. Clarice had never asked why Hannibal Lecter especially. Ardell suspected she didn’t understand.

He wound his fingers up in his short black hair. He had stopped working out when the FBI had turned down his application. He didn’t miss it.

As he dressed, he heard Clarice return from the OIG's offices. A week ago, she had asked his mind on not registering for the final examination. He had told her that she should stay and, for the first time in months, he had seen her truly hesitate. She still had weeks to make a decision. Registration would be open until January. And now she had come closer to Hannibal Lecter than he ever had been, even indirectly.

They hadn’t mentioned Will Graham’s name one more time between them. But she had that look, the one when things absent from the world, abstract or far away, took a hold of her and didn’t let her go until she was through with them. Usually, these were ideas and words, not people.

She had this look when he came out of his room. “What happened?” he asked. “Anything new on Graham?”

Removing her blazer, the gray one, the one she liked to wear to appear in control, even if it came out as cold, Clarice shook her head slowly. “I was meeting Prurnell.”

“To hand in your report? What did she say?”

Clarice crossed her hands at the back of her neck and closed her eyes. Her exhaustion filled the room, like poison, tiring at first, then sharp, and you didn’t know when you died. “She has another job for me,” she said. “I am to supervise the dismantlement of the BAU by the Inspector General.”

Ardell closed the refrigerator door he had opened and cocked his head. A few droplets of water ran down his scalp down his neck. “They’re closing the BAU?”

Nodding, Clarice gripped the counter behind her for support. “I talked Prurnell into keeping the BSU active as an archive, so the files won’t go in storage, but the field operations of the BAU are shut down.” She exhaled slowly through her nose. “Next week.”

“Behavioral analysis needs forensics background,” Ardell said.

“I know,” Clarice said. “Prurnell said this was all mine. That there was need for a profound change in mentalities and that this entailed a change in institutions and structures. As recommended in the conclusions of my report.”

Ardell nodded, slowly. “No united profiling services?”

Clarice shook her head.

“No field investigation of serial crimes?”

“The Bureau will send consultants to local police. Seriality will only be considered after profiles have been completed.”

Ardell scoffed. “Which means profilers won’t go in the field.”

Clarice nodded, feeling like she descended in her grave. It wasn’t like cold earth and walls of polished wood. No, it was warm, organic and beating. She had to fight against it for breath, for space. She was not buried, she was digested.

She took the Red Bull can Ardell gave her, let the coolness of metal soothe the skin of her hand. It burned and burned and burned.

“And these two cases from the Lecter files?” Ardell asked her. “Back in a box?”

Clarice sighed and took a sip from her can. She had never been able to pin down the sweetness’s flavor exactly, somewhere between strawberry, cherry and red. “Stop thinking about it, Ardell.”

He shrugged. “Thinking about what?”

Setting her drink down, Clarice brought her hands to cover her face. “You’re thinking about posting it on your website.”

For a few seconds, Ardell considered the floor, then he waved his Red Bull around. “At least, now, I don’t have to broach the subject,” he said. “And you’re also thinking about it.”

“I’m angry.”

“You should.”

 

* * *

 

Will tried to recall the occasions in which he had seen Hannibal eat a meal he hadn’t prepared. The only one that came to mind was the one they had both shared with Mason Verger, under Cordell’s supervision. The straps of the dolly digging in his skin, his teeth digging into the meat of Cordell’s cheek, blood digging at the inside of his empty stomach as he swallowed.

They were not prisoners in the same manner now. The room around them was spacious and light. Some of the rooms Will had passed on his way to the dining-room were decorated in a vague Japanese taste, as if to preserve some of it and not establish it strongly. But this one was different, bright, with high walls and white moldings running along the ceiling. Something of the old French province meeting the white deep South.

They had reached dessert. It was set on the table in a white ceramic dish. It seemed half-way between pie and _soufflé_ , with bright red spots underneath, each of them looking like setting suns. “ _Clafoutis limousin_ ,” Hannibal described. A young man, dressed in black, who hadn’t uttered a word since dinner had started, cut each of them a slice, served it into smaller, heated plates and topped it with mint leaves and hand-whipped cream. “The cherries inside are unpitted. There are concurring hypotheses as to the origin of that unique handling of fruits.”

Count Lecter sipped from his rosé wine. “Some say it is to allow the juice from the fruits not to stain the _flan_. Some others think it is because amygdalin, contained in the pits of cherries, adds flavors to the whole,” he said.

Will cut the tip of his clafoutis serving with his fork. Some juice from the cherries spilled out, dropping tiny drops of blood in the alabaster plate. “I was under the impression you didn’t cook,” he said.

Robertas cast a glance to his right, at the fourth table setting. It had been empty all evening, but with every course served as if someone was to eat them, left to cool as Will, Hannibal and Robertas ate, then removed as their own plates were. “I don’t.” His uncle stared at Hannibal who didn’t meet his eyes, lost in the glass of the sparkled water he drank instead of wine. “My wife, Murasaki, resided in France to study gastronomy. Now, I only eat what she served at my table.”

Closing his lips around the dessert, Will rolled it against his palate, careful not to chew too strongly, slowly stripping cherry pulp and egg from the pit. He caught it between two fingers and placed it in his plate. “Is it her you hallucinate?” he asked, eyes on the untouched clafoutis serving on his left. It deflated as the warmth left it and, underneath, a quiet pool of red grew.

“I don’t hallucinate,” Robertas said. “Her presence has only not been alleviated by her death. Her memory is so vivid that things should remember her as well.”

Hannibal turned slightly to Will. “The tremor in the right hand indicates the very early stage of a muscular disorder, possibly masking a global degenerative illness of the nervous system. That would be corroborated by the slight loss of peripheral vision in the right eye,” he told, studying his uncle clinically. “No other visible signs of dementia.”

“Dementia doesn’t necessarily have outward manifestations,” Will said.

“From time to time, I manage to make myself believe she is still here,” Robertas said quietly.

Examining the man before him, Will noted the sharp features, the thin shape of someone wrecked from the inside by the works of his own memory, the high brow and the still supple hair, gray, turning to white at the back, slicked back. The eyes had caught his attention the most at first: the right one was a deep blue with the left one’s pupil was blown, dilated so much that it encompassed the entire iris and made it look black. “I don’t know what you’ve gathered about me, but I can’t help you with that belief.”

“If I understand correctly, you are a profiler?”

Will’s eyebrow quirked. “I used to be.”

“You profile people based on their crimes, bring souls and minds to sight based on events and places,” Robertas went on. “You profiled my nephew.”

Placing his fork down, Will licked his lips. “I did a lot more than that. Or a lot less than that, depending on the point of view.” On his right, Hannibal’s gaze was lost in the plate reserved for Lady Murasaki, opposite him, searching inside, for something that resembled a precise object in a fogged maze.

“There was a crime on the Lecter property in 1984. I would like you to analyze it,” Robertas said.

“Would that ease the strain the elusive and always renews image of your wife puts on your mind?”

Robertas Lecter seemed to stiffen slightly. In front of him, the window was partially obstructed, not by blinds or curtains, but by orchids woven together, some of them flourishing and abundant enough to be decades old. “I have pictures and documents, police and autopsy reports, translated in English. Is that to your convenience?”

In front of Hannibal, the plate in the place setting for Lady Murasaki was taken away, still full. Coffee was served for them, then in her cup as well. Will’s vision shivered. It seemed he felt the tightening of all the threads that held his mind. “Yes. I’ll need somewhere quiet.”

“I will show you the study.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent all the week-end writing [this](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/post/147508315319/2x04), so it's why this update (technically Saturday's) is late. Monday's will be on time, in a couple hours. 
> 
> x


	25. 25.

The colorful shapes had always caught his attention as a very young man. On Sundays, the bakery was open early and he went along with his mother when she bought pastries and bread for breakfast. These were the best days. The future was pushed back until the week started and left them in the near-sleep of leisure. If he had lost his childish frame of mind, he did recall the bakery with a particular vividness.

The owners were Austrians. Every Christmas they baked cakes that looked like a girl's braid chopped off, covered in powdered sugar. His mother never bought it because it was not sweet enough for the children. On the counter, far above his reach, and his mother had never bought it either, because it was too sweet for the children, were marzipan figures. Pigs and dogs mostly, but friendly insects and funny flowers as well, brightly colored and delicately shaped.

Home-made Marzipan was difficult to make, but rewarding. Boiling and grounding the almonds was similar to boiling and grounding bones, but much quicker. However, he liked the smell of bones better, like earth and ashes. _Patisserie_ was disappointing, in most of its aspects, but scrupulously beautiful.

Dr. Lecter's later work was striking in its simplicity. It didn't hide from death, it welcomed it. It didn't dress it up, it sought to make it only more and more naked, closer and closer to its substance. Doing so, however, it had begun to lack the little deceptions of aesthetics.

Billy got to his feet, wiping parcels of marzipan off his fingernails. The eyes were coming along nicely, the red wasn't quite as on-point as he wanted it too. Blood didn't look like blood. The problem lied in its texture. As it dried, it clotted and froze, became covered in a film, first, then filled with dry lumps, bound together by lifeless lymph. Decent blood should be thickened, like sauce. The change from bread-based sauces to fat-based ones was considered the rite of passage of French gastronomy. Somewhere, deep in the trenches of the 17h century, amid the dancing kings and the stinking courts, sauces had ceased to be thought of as dense clusters of spice used to mask cooked meat's putrefaction. Maybe a return to this was in order. Origins were never really far away and they carried the smell of history.

 

* * *

 

_For a moment, Hannibal watched the dead man's head, stripes of flesh coming off, near the eyes especially. The irises were surrounded with a bright red, the white filled with the blood that had surged there during the violent strangulation. “The blood remained in the eyes even after decapitation?” he asked._

_Mr. Rubin stepped slightly aside and his face opened, honest surprise blooming there, like something entirely new and never before felt. It seemed to tempt him into happiness, or to bring him to brush against it, wind puffing the sails of his mind. “An uncommon reaction.”_

_There was a scalpel on Hannibal's desk, with the pen, but it would require deft finger work to get to it in time if Mr. Rubin was the least bit dedicated. “How so?” Hannibal said. “You must have greatly troubled yourself to preserve the color.”_

_The sun went out, hidden behind some of the thick clouds that had begun to gather. The office's darkness was sudden and dull, but the head kept a discreet shine, as if the liquid that contained it had retained the light. “What if I injected it after?” Mr. Rubin said._

_“That would be cheating.” Hannibal said. His face remained placid. He and Mr. Rubin moved so that he was on one side of his desk and the patient on the other. “Did you show this to your other psychiatrists?”_

_“If I did, would you be disappointed not to be special?” the man asked him, voice dropping to a slurring whisper._

_“I would be astonished to learn you weren't reported,” Hannibal said. “Physical proof of crime is not covered by psychotherapists' duty of confidentiality.”_

_Nodding largely, Mr. Rubin agreed. “Only the contents of the conversation.” He didn't appear outwardly too unstable. His manner was calm and collected, even if something within seemed to have boiled long ago and was now down to a quiet simmer, cumulating pressure in a cauldron. Hannibal wondered how calculated were the outbursts. “Please go to the end of that line of thought.”_

_Even though the words, unspoken, were acknowledged between them, Hannibal obliged. “You either believe I will not report you or you plan to kill me.”_

_Mr. Rubin's face darkened somewhat with resolve not entirely settled as he moved his head in a grave, slow nod. “I haven't decided yet.”_

_“Either way, you hope for an answer to your question, I believe,” Hannibal said, crossing his hands behind his back. “Meaning, was it?”_

_His patient fingered with the hem of his sleeve. He wore a fine jersey shirt under a thick vest, in desert tones, sand and rock, reminiscent of something an aviator from the dawn of the century. “Well, truth be told, I was hoping for more of a shock.”_

_“Then, unless it was an entirely rhetorical question, why don't you tell me – why?”_

_Mr. Rubin looked him over attentively. “You're good,” he commented. He seemed genuine. “No traces of fear. At all,” he emphasized. “No braced arms, no sweat, no nothing.”_

_A small smile came to Hannibal's lips. The sharp stick of fear was in fact long gone in him, crawling underneath the structures of beauty where it met rage and those of horror where it became blunt sublime. In the farthest, most secure sections of his brain, fear was slowly dying off, a blade through the stomach, stopped just below the heart with the sudden realization of what he was doing. “The absence of meaning would seem to me much scarier than such a curious offering. Lack of direction to your life threads through it like a parasitic vine, climbing onto the walls of a house and eating its mortar, melting it with the water its roots need and seek,” he said. “And once you want to find your way back to the wall because the roof leaks, you remove the vine and the brick falls apart into dust.”_

_Mr. Rubin had grown quiet. Not a man for sudden decisions, he must have studied him for years, Hannibal reflected. The thought of having been observed by a stranger for so long was shortly followed by the sight of Billy Rubin hung from his feet from the lowest branches of a tree, head removed at the neck, emptied of its content and placed as a bucket on the ground, to collect the blood that slid harmoniously from the torso. Tension, loss and verticality. “Better not remove the vine then,” Billy said._

_“And let the wall rot and the house fill with dampness?”_

_The man who had come as a patient now considered the chair to Hannibal's desk. He laid his palm on the back, but didn't sit in it. “We had a disagreement about a painter of the chiaroscuro, Gentileschi,” Mr. Rubin said, finally, gazing softly at the head in its jar. The glass now reflected the pale white of the cloudy sky, made more matte yet by the tempering of the fine curtains. “He thought her rendering of the decapitation of Holofernes by Judith was softer and put forward the need for collaboration in subduing the general and severing the head.”_

_“It also depicts the violence required more realistically than Caravaggio's.”_

_Mr. Rubin's finger twitched somewhat, as if they sized a tiny neck around which they were closing. He tilted his head in agreement. “My point too,” he said. “But he wouldn't change his mind.”_

_“Disagreements are more painful when they occur about subjects rarely discussed, about which concord is implicit,” Hannibal said._

_Mr. Rubin smiled broadly._

 

* * *

 

Will had no explicit conception of how big the house was. He didn't remember reaching it on foot, only how tiny it seemed from above in the meadow. Ideas of escaping still floated around in his mind, along with the blackness of night, strangled bodies on the floor, impersonal and voided of life like cups emptied, and finding Hannibal, a hand held out in the darkness. But it never shaped up to a concrete vision, as if his mind hesitated on the brink of the fall.

Yet he woke every morning with the brief, but warm feeling of Hannibal's chest held tightly against his, blood against blood. Their fall had lasted less than two seconds, all in all. But every time the sensation came back, it seemed to have lasted longer, swelling with time and memories until it could walk, live and breathe on its own.

Robertas Lecter led him to the end of a luminous hall, steps soft and airy. The study was a wide, open room with lamps in the four corners. Books lined the walls on clear shelves, spaced with plants and angels folded out of origami paper, sometimes crumpled to the point of looking monstrous. The work of a child. Will swallowed, as Count Lecter showed him a large wooden table with a seat and a closed file before it. Manila, with folds and creases decades old.

Slowly, in Will's mind, this place buried in the ground, burning its way into the soft, lichenous soil of the Lecter estate, as the image of Hannibal's childhood if he were to ever have one : light everywhere with chewed creatures of paper nested on shelves with feathers of dust, with blood rising from the floor, musical in its borborygmus.

“I think you have visited the manor in the Lecter estate?”

Will sat down, feeling like he had floated to his mooring, and placed his hands on either side of the file. “Chiyoh told you that.”

“She did.” Lecter smiled, content. “She took down the sculpture you created.”

Lifting his eyes to Robertas, Will found him eyeing the file with absent eyes. “You don’t seem surprised by that,” he said. “In fact, you don’t seem to care at all what happened that led us both to this point.”

“Are you grateful that I don’t?”

“It’s hard to feel gratefulness when so much is masked from you.”

The older man started toward the door. He was taller than Will, but frailer in stature. “I would be grateful if you told me what happened.”

“Hannibal made me believe that he had killed someone I loved dearly.”

Count Lecter stopped. “What did you do when you learned the truth?”

“I didn’t do anything. He killed her then.”

Pausing, Lecter didn't let go of the doorknob. Will saw him begin to consider the possibility that knowing the truth, if there was one, would cause his wife to perish. It would come for her where she lived now, protected within his mind, and yank her out, to bring her in the blunt papers of the file, in the small letters and the old gloss of Polaroid pictures.

The door closed and Will opened the file.

 

* * *

 

Alana had never been closer to an amount of deaths this massive. Verger Meats Inc., written in tall black letters in front of her, was only one of the names of the company Molson Verger had inherited and built upon. It had fourteen others total, most of them used for tax-avoidance purposes.

Margot had yet to regularize the situation. Once the sex of their child had been acknowledged by the lawyers of Burndt and Bregges, Verger Meatpacking Industries' representatives – Margot had walked in a meeting of the executives' board with a copy of the ultrasound image and projected it on the wall of the conference room, the tiny genitals of their son displayed in the size of a beach ball, right over the head of the Verger patriarch – she had been required to deal with each and every separate division of what was now a squirming multinational business in bloating expansion. Her ruling was yet to be accepted by the Sardinian branch, which claimed that executive decisions should not emanate from the child's mother, but from an independent person named to represent the interests of said child. Until this was settled, cash flowed in like blood, with the screaming and wailing in tow, but power didn't.

Before Alana was one of the three cattle houses of this relatively small, Canadian property, with over a thousand heads inside, most of them porcine. Margot had requested that they interrupt liquor feeding and return to fresh water, which alone caused a decrease of 8% in production. Liquor was the short and sweet name for the liquid drawn from waste and excrement, succinctly returned into the pigs' food. Mason found the thought particularly enjoyable, Margot had told Alana, to know that he contributed to the circle of life, by generating the growth of creatures from their own feces.

Alana hadn't dared to walk in yet. The tall metallic walls shielded her from the snow that came in a constant, near-horizontal fall, piling against the collar of her coat, reaching her ears and hair.

Her phone chimed softly and the decision of whether to enter or not in this office of hell was pushed back to later.

“Dr. Alana Bloom,” the voice said. It was rasped from cigarette smoke and otherwise coldly professional, if paid cash, largely and in advance.

“Herself,” she answered, moving closer to the wall to keep from the snow. “What did you find out?”

“Some movements in bank accounts,” it said. “In an unusual fashion.”

“What fashion?”

“Not a withdrawal.”

“He's moving money from account to account...”

A moment on the other end of the line for the barely audible drag on a cigarette. “From an off-shore account into an American, domestic, standard savings account, actually.”

“Uncanny,” Alana said.

“I've just texted you the account number.” A puffing cough. “A vet clinic somewhere on the East Coast, a bit inland.”


	26. 26.

Happiness itself was something faint, an idea that Hannibal, as a young man, found too modern. There was more to be gained from pleasure, fulfillment or bewilderment, but a cohesive feeling of unity was rare. Over the years, the rooms he frequented less had decayed slowly, piece by piece, not maintained in the exactitude of his memory by frequent visits. The smaller objects disappeared.

He recalled that this day, Lady Murasaki’s bed was unmade and he could not remember _if he had slept in it with her or not. The sheets were white percale, beginning to thin with use and time. The walls were slowly washed out and all things floated in space, undefined and abandoned. Sometimes, the period of the day changed: this once, it was white outside and dark inside._

_Years before the fall of the Soviet Union, social instability grew in the satellite countries, like all things needing to expand into chaos before reforming as a whole. To many it was a breath of fresh air. In the face of growing entropy, the reaction of most people was to form packs to better face the disruption of bonds. In what was to be his last summer spent on the Lecter estate, following his study of arts in Paris, and before his planned departure for Italy, these packs roamed the rural regions of Lithuania, where the remaining aristocratic families like the Lecters lived in estates mostly preserved from the reach of the socialist government and the people both. Sometimes it was government officials who came and claimed payment. In the end, it was scavengers, starving, pillaging and plundering. Savages and ravages._

_They came through the door this time and entered the manor itself. They took whatever shone. Silverware, earrings, mirrors, knives._

_In another room, Lady Murasaki’s face leaned over a pot where water boiled. The smell in the air was still the one of plants and not yet the one of perfume. “You know what they do. Especially to women,” she said. The vapor of water formed a mist on her brow like sweat._

_Hannibal eyed the kitchen around him. “You would have fought them.”_

_“One against many. I would have lost.”_

_Before Lady Murasaki, the rose petals came to the surface of the pot as if they were thrown in the air from beneath. It needed to boil only for a few minutes, then it had to be left alone. The petals didn’t thicken with the water, but instead thinned, almost melted. The white and pink flowers were now transparent in the reddish hue of the water, consumed by the heat. “You lost one against one,” he said._

_Once the water had cooled down, Murasaki fished the petals out with a net and let the water rest. With almond oil added, it would form the perfume with which she washed her face, every morning._

_She was leaving the kitchen now. “Are you coming with me?”_

_“To go where?” he asked. Around him, the walls shuddered. Outside, the cries grew louder._

_She gestured to the open door. It led from the kitchen to the other rooms of the ground floor. At the moment, there was only dark beyond. “All of this is you. There is nothing you don’t know.”_

_He remembered the weight of the short blade in his hands. It came on its own, from nowhere. The one he had found between her hands. “There are things I know are unpleasant.”_

_Murasaki smiled as she did, with a subtle shift near her eyes that gave away riddles that were as fine as lace. “This is what I was. Unpleasant?”_

_The reaving scavengers were inside now. They were even louder now that their screams echoed in the corridors, amid the doors hurriedly closed before them. Hannibal’s hands began to cover with blood until they were drenched, up to the elbows. “Not until the end,” he said._

_“Where will you go?” she asked. And he followed her into the depths of the house. She was going to her room, the third floor, the creaking roof above, the wind coming from the east shaking the window panes in their wooden frames._

_“The mind is not entirely like a place and sometimes there is nothing to do except open our eyes,” he said._

_She always wore black, a noble color. “Are the rooms better ordered now? You were always put-together,” she said, fingers drifting on the windowsill. She must have considered jumping out, a death beautiful in its bravery, dignified if not courageous._

_He couldn’t bring himself to smile. “You liked it.”_

_Murasaki nodded and began to tie her hair in a tight bow at the fall of her neck. Over her own black suit in a fine cut, she slipped her husband’s jacket, its thick cashmere masking all female about her in the dim light. “It matters to be someone beautiful, just equally as to be someone good.”_

_“Good is a strange word to use to describe someone,” he said. “Especially me.”  
_

_She sat on the bed. He stood much taller and broader than her now. She looked up at him as she buttoned the thick jacket closed, then put on Robertas Lecter’s hat. “But you are,” she said. She grabbed the short knife that she kept under the bed and held it close against her chest. “Beautiful.”_

_She rose then and walked to the wall behind the door. It was where he would find her._

_He shut his eyes. When he opened them, he was in the corridor outside. Screams and ruckus came from below. Will stood in front of him. He uncrossed his arms to push his glasses further up his nose. “Nice word isn’t it?” he said. “Beautiful. Even when it hurts.”_

_“Would you judge chaos to be beautiful?” Hannibal asked._

_Will scoffed quietly. All noises around them had quieted. “I’ll tell you when I get back,” he said. There wasn’t a sound as he turned the doorknob of Murasaki’s bedroom._

_He disappeared inside_ and the thick roar erupted around Hannibal again.

 

* * *

 

Hannibal’s mind palace was not obscured to Will, but it was abstract. Rooms could not be separated from feelings, people could not be without their death. When he had been to the Lecter manor, he had not been above ground level. Chiyoh had shown him the staircases, steps missing, some rotten, some torn apart. The door was barred.

_This room was no palace. There was a bed under a window, sheets undone. It was early morning, minutes no doubt before sunrise. The house hadn’t yet woken up. The noise started outside, known but feared, and, as it grew closer, the rooms came to life._

_A woman came into the room, there was something frantic about, her gracefully held hair falling done in times with her movements. The room seemed empty around her. She sought for anything, a weapon, something else. She didn’t know what._

_They would enter the house and steal everything, beat everyone who was there. Kill some of them most probably. She stilled and breathed. According to the police report, she was Murasaki Kondo, wife of Robertas Lecter, 32 at the time of her death in 1984 during an assault on the Lecter manor, north of Panevėžys. The manor was partially destroyed in a subsequent fire, most of the estate ransacked.  
_

_A single weapon was found: a knife, its blade only three inches long, with a smooth black handle. All looters were dead, some of them had burned. Lady Murasaki’s body was found in her room. She still stood on her feet, against the wall behind the door, eyes open and looking straight ahead, cold hands clutching her abdomen. She was dressed in men’s clothes._

_The blade had gone through her stomach, almost vertically, the tip digging beneath the ribcage. It had torn through the pleura and pierced the lungs. Will tilted his head: the knife was going to the heart and had stopped short._

_Will opened the door roughly. He was searching for someone, but not to kill them. Murasaki’s room was familiar to him, he knew his way around. He also knew her. But he didn’t find her in the room. Eyes with the palpable fear and the beating life inside him, he found another one. Someone wearing his uncle’s coat. Along with something that was not true jealousy, and more acute than curiosity, the occasion seemed as good as any._

_Will’s arms sprung forward and spun the body around, the frame thin and small in his arms. He barely had time to look at her face, hidden behind the tall collar of the coat. His wrist moved swiftly and the knife was already well in. He looked up to peer in his uncle’s eyes a last time and the black irises found his. The knife stilled. He tried to pull it out, but Murasaki kept it in as life was drained out of her._

_For a moment, all things stopped. Will’s mouth opened and he listened to his own breathing, holding her against himself, as if he could breathe in her place, as if they were only one body, again. She remained standing, strong and tense and exhaled slowly into his neck, blood pouring out on their legs, their feet._

At last, Will opened his eyes. The brightly lit study of Robertas Lecter’s cottage took shape around him. The clear walls, the white shelves, the books’ pale leather. The photographs were splayed before him, most of them too dark, the police report, too late, too little. Under all of them was a portrait of Hannibal Lecter, aged 19, more child than man, younger than the one on Pazzi’s photograph of Il Mostro. The photograph was old, wrinkled. It had been contemplated many times.

Licking his lips, Will closed his eyes. _Behind them, melting into each other, hope, desire and a budding love that didn’t know its name flashed, taking its most beautiful shape as it fell over into pain._ “I watched her die,” he said.

 

* * *

 

For a while, he stayed in the study, waiting for Hannibal’s life to contract in him, until it was back in its place, coiled in his mind. It was aglow and insistent, but its pain had left his muscles. The rooms and corridors pulsed against him as Will walked. His legs felt firmer under him. The residual pain in his cheek was gone, the strain in his shoulder as well, but he took his hand to his right side, feeling for the wound that wasn’t there.

Robertas Lecter waited for him in the dining room, seated in his place. There was a tea cup in front of him and one on his right.

“Your findings?” he asked, calm, hands in his lap.

Will blinked and felt Hannibal looking out through his eyes. They stung. He realized he may have cried, but he didn’t remember. “You’re pursuing the wrong sentiment,” Will started, sitting opposite Lecter, motions slow. “You don’t want to know if he killed her. You want to know if she loved him back.” Will turned to his left, where Murasaki’s place was. “You should ask her that.”

Lecter shook his head. “She doesn’t talk to me,” he said. “What happened?”

“You know what happened,” Will said. “After she died, Hannibal did what he does best. He killed them all, all those who had thought about her, everyone who was involved. Every last one.”

The older man’s eyes came to rest on him. On the dinner table, a streak of sun, liquid and yellow on the dark wood, stopped in front of Lecter. “He didn’t kill me,” Robertas said.

“Why would he? He already had.” A silent man brought a tea cup for him and Will shook his head. He didn’t pour him any tea, but left the cup there. “Do you talk to her?” Will asked Count Lecter, trying to glimpse a trace of his reflection in the white porcelain.

The man’s face was touched with a placid frown. “We talked frequently at first. As if our lives hadn’t changed. I returned to Japan. She seemed happy, but with the years passing, she started to...” His eyes returned to the empty chair. Count Lecter studied it so intently, it seemed he saw her in the grain of the wood and the faint slivers of light reflected on varnish. “Fade.”

“Do you see traces of her in him?”

Lecter’s eyes became unfocused. His hand twitched once. “Almost none.”

Will got to his feet and circled the table until he stood behind the chair where Murasaki would sit. He leaned forward and took the saucer and cup. His fingers closed around the handle, _and Abigail placed her cup of coffee down. They were on either side of Hannibal’s dinner table. She looked at him tenderly, with a stiff smile, then pushed her cup to the ground._ Will brought Lady Murasaki’s tea cup to a small table under the window and placed it down.

The orchids threaded in front of the window like vines. Will felt them pushing against his mind. 

 

* * *

 

Bending down, Freddie wrapped the towel around her hair. She swung her head backward, tucking one corner under the back to form a tight turban. Slipping a robe on, she checked her phone. Its light cast a blue hue in the fogged bathroom mirror. She had checked it before showering. Last night’s article on a man in Arkansas who claimed to have killed Marylin Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter had yet to reach ten thousand likes.

She scrolled down to the recent activity. The most recent post was a comment on an article she had posted a few weeks before, about the discovery of a doll arm on a crime scene Will Graham had investigated in 2012. The end of the article went like this: “Is Will Graham secretly revisiting his crime scenes, leaving mysterious clues as to the new, deadly game he invites the FBI to play? Is someone else trying to reach out to other killers by leaving a morbid trail of dismembered dolls? What is the FBI hiding from us? If you have any info, tattle with us on Twitter and Facebook. We love your tattlings!”

She suspected the leak came from the FBI. But she didn’t know much more and the article had sunk rapidly in viewings and likes. It didn’t compare to the rest. In Argentina, a rich man had contacted a face-lifting clinic to have surgery on his cheeks, nose and eyes, citing his main motivation as needing to escape Interpol, because he was Hannibal Lecter. When Freddie had gotten him on the phone, the exuberant man had said, with a heavy Spanish accent, that he hoped he could attend the opera soon again. In France, a woman had claimed she was Hannibal Lecter’s daughter and had participated in many of his crimes. She also maintained he had recently contacted her and had told her he would want to eat stuffed pigeons in a cocoa sauce when joining her at a secret rendezvous point.

No one cared for doll arms. And less and less people cared for Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham. She poked the subject often enough, but ratings and clicks were beginning to droop. She had begun to think of a retrospective article, chronicling both their exploits. It would have a timeline and could even intersect with the book on Abigail, _Child of a Deadly Hunt_. Or _The Last Prey_. She wasn’t sure yet.

She clicked to expand the comment. It read: “Here’s a simple, home-made tattling! With love.” Beside it was a zipped file. Freddie clicked on it.

 

* * *

 

The FBI received the picture by mail the same day it was uploaded from a fake IP address in the comments section of Tattlecrime’s website. It was addressed to Will Graham, again. It was taken straight into evidence this time. A file was opened on VICAP, but there were administrative issues with its parent department, since the BAU would soon no longer be an option.

Inside the envelope was a picture of the red door of the Marlows’ house.


	27. 27.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously the Saturday updates don't work so well these days. ._. I'll post two parts in the meantime and switch the posting schedule somewhat.

 

* * *

 

 _Carborandum_ (n.): Made from ground silicon carbide, carborandum is a powerful abrasive, used to polish or erase colors or textures. Fused together, its beads form ceramic plates used in the fabrication of body armor.

 

* * *

 

Downfalls were discreet. No one cared for trees, lonesome in forests. No one cared either for the old-growth forests wiped from the face of the Earth. Like the Maryland home to the tulip poplar, the BAU had been allowed to flourish without the influence of common men and bureaucratic exploitation. Tolerated in the early years of Jack Crawford’s employment by the FBI, it had become fully accepted when nine of its first ten psycho-behavioral profiles were more exact than all those before. They had not led to any arrests, but had been acknowledged. It became celebrated after its profile of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and famous both for the nearly catastrophic circumstances of his failed apprehension and for the survival of his daughter.

Since Clarice had handed in her report, Jack had received no call of any kind. It had been nearly two whole days now. He had stared at the first page of Will Graham’s profile of the Minnesota Shrike, framed and hung on the wall of Jack's office, and had mused whose office it would become. He would recommend Starling, if he was still allowed that. In fact, he would do it even if he needed to push it down their throats.

Will would have hated it, Jack thought, to see his work on display like that, like it was some kind of art, like it was spontaneous and mysterious and esoteric. It had only been placed there once Will had fully resigned, before the trial started.

In Jack’s mind, trees kept falling silently. Deadfalls and deadwood piling into shapes and faces. He arrived early that morning at the Bureau’s vehicle depot to place a request for a rental. Out of habit, his hand started filling out the form. The young man behind the counter called him twice before Jack looked up.

It was how Jack learned that he had been suspended from active duty. He couldn’t take out a car anymore.

Blinking a few times, he eyed the gray carpeting, worn and thinned in the clear white light from above. And he discovered that, in more ways than he had thought possible, he had considered the FBI home. Even when he had left for Florence on his own, even when law had seemed like it constricted his breathing in the realm of things Hannibal had set out for them.

He placed the pen down on the form and pursed his lips at the clerk. He didn’t even stop by his office and headed straight down to the parking lot, to start the long road that would take him to New Jersey.

 

* * *

 

_Robertas Lecter was dressed in the same coat and hat Murasaki had worn, his stomach bleeding. Hannibal held the knife, but, then, Will did. The blade was very sharp, but truncated, like it had been broken and Will had to bury his hand wrist deep into the body to try and reach the heart. While Robertas struggled, his features slowly reversed to those of his wife and then they spilled apart in Will’s arms, the body gone, clothes turning into liquid, feathers and wind, all black._

Sitting upright in bed as Chiyoh walked in, Will felt his forearms for the lukewarmth of blood. He didn’t find it, but a light tingling remained.

He got out of bed to stand. His strength was nothing like it was, but he had regained a decent motion range. The gauze bandages were not stained in blood as often. The stitches in his cheek had been removed ten days ago.

He stretched his arms above his head and Chiyoh stretched her own along his, helping him maintain them straight. “Is there anything else?” Will asked, after a moment. “His sister, his aunt. Who else is there?”

Chiyoh’s fingers circled Will’s wrists to hold them tightly. “You mean who else died?”

“It seems too blunt to call them deaths, when I know how reverberant they’ve been,” Will said.

“I wasn’t there when his parents died,” she said, gaze flickering to meet Will’s eyes.

“You arrived with the Count.”

She nodded. “My mother was maid to his wife.”

Will took his eyes off her and saw it. The child allowed to join her mother because there was another child, of the same age, the same sex, that she could play with, that she could entertain, distract from her parents’ death. The grown child, returning to the Lecter estate to collect the belongings of Murasaki, she thought, and staying there, forever, to guard a prisoner Hannibal had found for her. To stay in the prison Hannibal had made for her. Much like they stayed here, in this prison where memories haunted ghosts and ghosts preyed on memories.

He swallowed. The pain reached the middle of his back. His shoulders still felt tense. “At this point, I suppose you figured out he’ll never let us go,” Will said, quietly.

Chiyoh paused and let go of his arms. Will winced as he brought them down slowly. “Where would you go? There are very few places for you that wouldn’t be like cages.”

“Why shouldn’t it be like a cage?”

A frown touched the younger woman’s face. “It is ironic that birds should be caged. Their world is only space and that is the only thing the bars remove from their reach.” She gestured to Will’s breakfast. She had set the tray beside his bed. “You will not remove Hannibal from himself,” she said as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

It was gray outside. A light drizzle fell, dotting the window with something that had all the appearances of a fog clinging to the glass and none of those of rain. It would dissipate later, with the sun. “If you tell me the layout of the house,” he said, “I’ll do the rest.”

“What rest?”

Will reached for the cup of tea near the plate. His fingers brushed by it and he left it sit. “What you want me to do. What I can do,” he said. “Then we can leave.”

 

* * *

 

It was mid-afternoon when Jack Crawford reached Count Robertas Lecter’s house. It was not exactly a house. When smaller towns became rarer and grasslands followed meadows on both sides of the car, Jack Crawford stopped at a crossing. In front of him, the main road went on. On his right a less-traveled road started through a dense patch of woods, shivering in the winter wind. The ground was battered, but it seemed little used.

At the end, once the light-colored birches became scarcer, vast fields appeared, gold and gray, and two miles ahead, Jack caught sight of the house. It had white walls, a black roof and traces of Colonial Revival in the pediments of the door and window frames. It appeared large enough to host guests. He was stopped a hundred yards before the house itself by two Japanese men. One of them stayed by the side of the road, near the short oaks with leaves still green. The other one stepped in front of Jack’s car, hands in mid-air. Jack saw the shine of the pistol’s butt sitting at the man’s hips.

The guards inspected his FBI ID with narrowed, unimpressed eyes. Jack didn’t know what they would protect like this. On his way, he had accustomed himself to the idea that Robertas Lecter might know how Hannibal had survived the fall and where to find him. As he was requested to leave his car at the entrance of the path that led to the house, the idea started to flutter at the back of his head, that Hannibal Lecter might be here. It was strange, felt new to the tongue, difficultly palatable, exactly as Hannibal’s surrender had. At least half of him had hoped for Hannibal and Will to be dead, he realized, weeks after he had learned from Clarice of Will’s survival. This half still seemed to thrive and fight.

Count Lecter welcomed him outside, steps crisp and careful in the thin shine of snow on the ground. “An unannounced visit, Agent Crawford?” he asked, holding out a gloved hand.

Jack shook his hand, finding it stiff and heavy. “Did you do your research on me before or after your nephew’s trial, Count Lecter?”

“Both.”

Their breaths traced patterns in the air. “Was it to your satisfaction?”

“I have little interest in you,” the older man said, his voice polite, nearly an apology. “But you have interest in me and I suppose I should entertain that. Shall we?” He was motioning for them to enter the house.

Thick wood closed behind Jack Crawford. Servants took their coats, scarves and gloves. Jack’s eyes darted to the quiet interior: two plush armchairs in the entrance where they stood, a desk, black and sleek, mounted with living and dry flowers woven together in a glass vase that held sunlight. In a room to his right, Jack saw an ornate _butsudan_ , but the door closed and Robertas Lecter guided him the other way.

Jack spoke to Count Lecter’s back, as he preceded him in the house. “You bailed Chiyoh Kusachi out of prison in Maryland. Why?”

Lecter paused in a doorway. “Because she did not belong there.”

“She had information,” Jack said. In the corridors, they passed three doors, all of them closed. Finally, they stopped by large glass doors framed in wood patterned with Acanthus leaves. Beyond them was a garden in an inner courtyard, simple in design, with a pond at the middle. Jack suspected it was a perfect round. The pebbles tracing paths were covered in snow and instead of grass, the floor was carpeted with pale-green moss. It had absorbed snow and now seemed brittle and roughened.

“Probably not the kind you were expecting.”

The doors opened without a sound. The garden was warmer than the outside, as if the heat was trapped between the walls. “What was I expecting?” Jack said.

“To find out what had happened with my nephew and Mr. Graham,” Robertas Lecter said. “To give a final chase and close a chapter. To obtain certainty, if not justice.”

Under their steps, the pebbles creaked softly. Jack gave a smile and a shake of his head. “Certainty and justice are two words that don’t suit Hannibal Lecter.”

“Do they still suit you? I was under the impression you were only after death, now. You used to investigate crimes and now you pursue something much thinner, more insubstantial.” Count Lecter was speaking pensively, yet Jack understood that his mind was entirely elsewhere, somewhere in another room, maybe in another house or another life, a past life that threatened to escape him so that he would drown in it to remain there. “You are after death itself.”

“Death is anything but flimsy,” Jack said. “It stays with you longer than you would wish.”

Count Lecter nodded gravely. “And you know of it. How long did your wife stay with you?”

Jack's eyes had been lost in the meandering ramifications of the moss, its calm patterns, troubled by sudden rises, then smooth again. He brought them back up to Lecter slowly. During the moment of silence that followed, he swallowed what he was about to say. He flexed his hands. “Where is Ms. Kusachi? I would like to speak with her.” Death was Robertas Lecter's eyes, he thought, one open wider than the other, taking in more light.

“I don’t know where she is.” The older man bowed his head gently. “I meant no offense. My wife died in circumstances that are profoundly unfortunate or vehemently tragic, depending on whether your view of life is pessimistic or sanguine.”

“What circumstances?”

“You can do research of your own. It was long ago.” A bird came to sit nearby on a window ledge. “I can confirm to you that it won’t fade.”

Bella's face was still as vivid, Jack recalled. Only now, in all his memories, she never faced him, she always turned away. Her eyes still tingled with life, but they never looked directly at him. “Oh, it has.”

“It’s a trick of the mind, Agent Crawford,” Lecter said. He clasped his left hand over his right wrist to hide the twitch there and his eyes flew to a point over Jack's shoulder. “I have stopped believing in death.”

A frown came to Jack's face. He wasn't sure how literal the conversation was. It reminded him of Hannibal, but in a manner more twisted, as if slightly misshapen. “Death isn’t something you believe into. It doesn't let you believe,” Jack said. “Anything.”

“The physical event in itself is impressive, I grant you that. Blood, empty eyes, the decaying of flesh. It creates the idea of a transformation, while in your mind nothing has changed.”

Lecter's focus seemed faltering and Jack became more and more convinced he wasn't the one spoken to. “Everything has changed. The air doesn’t feel the same because she isn’t here to breathe it.”

“Yet, it’s the same air,” Lecter said. “She has breathed it so many times. It’s hers now.”

Jack reached out and closed his hand over Robertas Lecter's arm. After a moment, the eyes stopped searching and came back on him. “Are you aware of the whereabouts of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham?”

“To my knowledge, which is the one made public by the news, based on information from the FBI, they are dead.”

Jack smiled. The bird above them seemed to consider landing by the pond, but jumped from side to side on its ledge. “But then people don’t really die, do they?”

“My nephew’s image will never leave my mind.”

“You’re going to make me get a warrant.”

“I’m afraid so.”

 

* * *

 

Coming to land on the west window’s ledge, a bird caught Will’s attention, its chirping close and sharp, as if it aimed to pierce the glass. It was small, a white belly with a black, sharp bill.

He looked up from the bed and out the window. _There were suddenly thick pine branches, loaded with a first snowfall. “A tufted titmouse,” Walter pointed. “My book says it looks like he’s wearing a gray jacket over a white shirt.”_

“ _You disagree?” Will asked._

“ _It’s too small to wear a jacket,” Walter said, serious, eyes on the small bird, which cocked its head sideways. They never left its sight. “Could we feed it?” the boy asked._

“ _We could,” Will said. “But it seems to be doing fine on its own.” The titmouse had picked a caterpillar from under the tree’s bark. It twisted in its beak as it struggled for life._

Will got up to peer closer. Titmice didn’t run from humans looking at them through windows, fascinated with their own images, said the casual explanation. Will didn’t believe it.

But Will’s eyes went over the bird. In the garden below stood Jack Crawford. Chiyoh had detailed the layout of the house and had not locked his door on her way out. No one had come to check it since. He headed out, careful to walk as close to the walls as possible. Even then, it should have struck him that he saw no one. He didn’t know what he would have done if he had.

On the ground floor, the first door on his right led outside. He opened it and found himself on the east side of the cottage. He walked along the path and came face to face with Jack Crawford.

 

* * *

 

This time, Clarice Starling didn’t go by herself to the Marlow crime scene. Jack Crawford couldn’t be found. She was running when she got the call. She had waited over the week-end to tell Jack, waited to come up with something bureaucratically acceptable, toying with ideas to encourage Prurnell to consider the salvation of the BAU instead of its damnation. None of them had gone beyond the mere whispers of supposition. Prurnell was just as a rock: her determination was in fact indifference, her aggressivity was resistance.

Her cell phone buzzed in the holder on her arm. It was barely dawn. Under the gray sky, she answered, panting, legs spasming from the abrupt stop. She curled her toes and ankles, both to alleviate the nervousness and to help uncramp the muscles in her thighs.

In the late morning, the SWAT burst into the Marlows’ house. The door was unlocked. A first team of twelve men went in. Five more waited outside.

They didn’t go far in: on the floor of the living room was a human head, well-preserved, with its eyes closed and its tongue sticking out. It had long hair and a short beard, like Holofernes decapitated by Judith. They searched the house and found nothing.

 


	28. 28.

Alana was still not used to not driving her own car. The driver wore a handgun at the hip. The other man in the front seat had a pistol in a holder under his arm, one under his right sock and a Maschinenpistol 5 strapped to his chest. His coat couldn’t close over it. Under her own blouse, she had Kevlar vest. It compressed her chest every time she breathed and she still felt naked.

Her phone chimed. The sun was rising, shedding traces of pink in the trees, somewhere at a point over the Canadian-American border. “You didn’t wake me up?” Margot asked her.

“No,” she said. “I thought you would understand.”

“I do,” Margot said. “I wouldn’t have convinced you.”

“No.”

“You’re scared.”

“I am,” Alana said.

There was a moment of silence at the other end. Alana could see her. Margot was sitting in bed, the sheets up to her waist, water bundling in her eyes, but not crying. She wouldn’t cry. “I’ll tell Morgan you had to return to the hospital for a few days.”

Alana felt the tears come up in her throat, as if Margot had passed the sadness over to her through the waves in the air, invisible and fleeting. “I have to make sure,” she said, clearing her throat.

“If he isn’t dead, what then?” she said. A long breath. “We’ll kill him?”

The car emerged from the trees in the lake of blood the sun had spread on the road.

 

* * *

 

“No one died since the vet in Fallow,” Will said.

Jack stopped and frowned. He shook his head. “What vet?”

Will’s back stiffened. The image of Nour Ayesh’s dead body, mirrors in her eyes, had been recurrently on his mind, always sitting at the back, looking out through the glass that masked her silent gaze. Its reality had slowly started to coalesce into solidity, like mist suddenly precipitating through a gradual change of temperature. Her limbs had grown stiffer, her clothing more precise as he devoted more time to memorize it. Her arms were crossed on her chest. Hannibal would have left her peaceful. The Dragon would have left her ravaged. Will’s mind went back and forth between the first and the second. With every moment he spent with his eyes closed, he added force to the sight. He had supposed a broken neck, because Hannibal had too little strength at the time to engage in a broader struggle, or in more complex work. The regret for her death fell into the well down into which Will hoped to take them both, away from world and light.

It was beginning to get cold around him. His extremities tingled.

While he searched for words, _Nour Ayesh looked up at him. She smiled and the mirrors fell from her eyes. The bruise left her neck and, as rapid as the construction of her in Will's imagination had been slow, she disappeared in a puffing mist of water and fell to the ground in snow_. “A veterinary clinic in Fallow. I broke in to get medicine. There was a vet there, a woman.” Jack’s eyes closed as he accepted information that he must not be wanting. “Everything was there, Jack. Blood, hair, fingerprints. A textbook crime scene.”

Jack shook his head slowly. “If someone died in Maryland in someplace with your fingerprints in it, I would’ve known.” He nudged up the collar of his winter coat. “I combed through everything, even accidental deaths,” he said. “Freddie Lounds did too.”

Will turned around, intently focused on something absent, and started retreating toward the house.

“Your plan isn’t working, Will,” Jack called him out.

The younger man stilled. “Actually, it’s working better than I thought.”

Jack eyed the horizon. His voice sounded barren. “I’ll be back here.”

Will nodded. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

_The Duomo caught the last sighs of the sunset. Its tip turned a bright mauve. The light fell and it became a dark purple, as night found the world waiting for it. It settled in the city like a peaceful animal preparing itself for sleep, nudging its nose into its tail, breathing in its own smell, before finally closing its eyes, trusting the world to fall away with it when it did._

_Hannibal’s fingers stroked the paper, searching for the sketches it hid, eyes lost. They grabbed a roughened stick of charcoal and began to draw short, curling lines._

“ _In the nineteenth century,” Bedelia said, somewhere behind him, her voice nearly lost in the murmuring evening. “Ghosts were believed to be a temporal problem.” She paused. His ear caught the minute workings of her throat as wine went in, his nose captured the shifts in the smell of her saliva, now more acid. “People for whom space and time had ceased to function properly, to gather together as the present.”_

_At the bottom left of the page, black tortuosities piled. They began to give way to a shape. “A simple mistake in location,” he said, eyes not leaving the moving charcoal. “Like taking the wrong turn and finding ourselves on a dangerous street, unaware still that we are lost.”_

“ _Are your ghosts unaware, Hannibal?”_

_Hannibal tilted his head to the side, as if to favor his right ear. Bedelia’s breathing was slightly shallower, with the expectance of his answer or with some of the deeper rolls of fear that came from the twists of her stomach. “Some of the ghastliest figures of our mind would do well to remain ignorant of what they are.”_

_The night encased Bedelia in the velvet of its cooler wind. “Allowing you to ignore them as well?”_

_In a seamless motion, Hannibal stopped drawing and returned the charcoal to its box. “On the contrary,” he said. “If souls were preserved in one form or another, to appear in visions to the living, time and space would have contracted to form a long band of torturing present.”_

_He left his seat, his white shirt, open, tails flapping around him. He stopped by the candle that cast a halo in the window panes and placed his drawing over it, watching the flames eat the lines. The beginnings of a dog disappeared, as well as the legs of its master, barely sketched._

 

* * *

 

From the house plan, Will had memorized the way to three places: Robertas Lecter’s room, the dining-room downstairs and Hannibal’s room. At the top of the stairs that led to the second floor, he came to a sharp stop when he encountered a Japanese guard. The man eyed him, almost curious, silent, then he stepped aside and motioned for him to proceed.

Doing so, Will thought that they had less time left. In his mind, he started counting. They were far in the countryside, buried deep. It would take Jack at least thirty minutes to get back to somewhere where he could use his phone. From that point on, depending on what Jack’s fate had been within the FBI, it could take two hours, if they sent people from the Newark field office, a little more if they rounded up with local police and much longer if they called in people from Washington.

He reached Hannibal’s room. It wasn’t locked.

Inside, he found furniture similar to the one he knew. In the opposite wall was an open closet, clothing pushed aside. His back to the door, Hannibal pulled himself up, hands wrapped tightly around the bar, arms trembling. Healing had made him thinner.

He let himself back to his feet smoothly and turned around, not hiding the heaving in his chest. There was a large bruise that went from his clavicle to his ribs. It may have been from Dolarhyde or from the fall in the ocean. It was still blueing into dark when Bedelia tended to him, Will recalled through fogs and waves. It had paled into pink petechial streaks now. The bandage, high on Hannibal’s back, was tinged with red from the effort. There was no more gauze on his front, only a red mark.

Will ducked his head. “I just talked with Jack Crawford.”

“Really?” Hannibal said, lips parted. He took a white shirt from the bed.

“Why is Nour Ayesh alive?”

Hannibal buttoned his shirt up, breathing quieting. “Why would she be dead?”

“Because I liked her.” Will swallowed and frowned. “Isn’t it reason enough?”

A few brief shadows crossed Hannibal’s brow. The light in his eyes swelled. “Not exactly.”

In the corner was the same armchair as there was in Will’s room. Will went to it. His limp was still discernible in the way he needed to angle his leg slightly out when walking. Hannibal’s was nearly gone. “What did you tell her?” he asked.

Hannibal sat on the edge of the bed and brushed his hair from his brow. “Very little. I told her that I had transferred a large sum of money into her bank account. Then I explained her that I would render her unconscious and that we would be gone when she woke.”

“You knew she wouldn’t call the police,” Will said, fumbling as he felt for the truth he had believed he held. Now that he knew Nour Ayesh wasn’t dead, the opposite seemed absurd.

Hannibal straightened his shoulders in a small shrug. “She could just as well have.”

“Why not tell me she lived?”

“It would have worried you,” Hannibal said, one hand absently smoothening the folds in the pillow’s silk.

“Worry thrives on the fear of losing one’s footing in completion,” Will said. “I’ve hardly had any of that recently.” He didn’t know if he referred to the past weeks or the past years. At this point, both had become blurred in the past, as much as he had sought to draw a line in the ethereal cloth of his life when he had cut Hannibal away from him.

A moment passed during which Will felt Hannibal’s eyes stop on him and prod. “And yet, you’re troubled,” Hannibal said, finally. “Are you unsettled by the thought that your plan may turn out to be more successful than you anticipated or by the realization that I’m a willing participant?”

Sitting back in the chair, Will exhaled slowly. “You’re never a willing participant in anything that isn’t your own game.”

“It’s our game now,” Hannibal said. He had spoken with the tranquil tone of someone who offers banal revelations. Will kept his eyes off him and wondered if it had ever been anything else. “Is Jack well?”

“No. Or, about as well as we are.”

“Prisoner of someone else’s mind?” Hannibal prompted, giving a light smile. The sweat had dried on his brow. He had crossed his hands in his lap.

Will flexed his hands before him. “Something like that,” he said.

It would be evening soon. The first hour was nearly up already since Will had seen Jack Crawford. Hannibal stared at Will hands as Will did and, soon, it appeared as if they both expected an answer from them.

“Do you prefer to do it yourself?” Hannibal said, after a moment. “Or should I?”

Shaking his head, Will began to feel a known wobble gather inside. Parts of him needed to be wrought apart before being brought into motion. “I’ll do it,” he said. He rose from the chair. This house had its own specific kind of silence. It always seemed to be waiting to scream. When he reached the door, an idea suddenly materialized in his mind. And the picture turned from scattered pieces into a living intention, fragmentary but recognizable. “Alana Bloom must monitor your money.”

Hannibal remained still, straight, facing away. “Most probably.”

“She’ll track Nour Ayesh down.”

“I expect her to.” Hannibal turned to him, neatly tucking his shirt in his pants. He looked almost exactly like the first time Will had met him now, strands of hair over eyes, others held on the side. The changes were minute: paler skin, rougher hands. Will had changed as well. Only, in him, the alterations felt like gashes, as wide as the sky, tearing into flesh and nerves. “Your plan is a good plan, Will. And this is a good test for it.”

Will brought his hands together and lifted them to his face. His breath warmed his fingertips for a while. Then he left the room, going to find Robertas Lecter. There was barely one hour left.

 

* * *

 

 

The Fallow Veterinary Clinic was lost in the pines at the end of a road. It required people to go far out of their way. Its roof was black, with moss in the valleys and over the eaves, and its walls were wood planks painted in a faded blue. It provided service to farm animals as well as pets, even though most of its residents were hunting or guarding dogs. There were layers of dead pine needles on the ground and traces of a recent snowfall.

Alana felt as though the dark house kept the forest at bay, both its first ambassador and the guardian against it.

She requested that the guard stay in the car, but the driver insisted on coming in with her. She walked in a waiting room that smelled of wet dogs and the odor that tried to cover it. It was empty, but a little bell rang as soon as the door shut behind her. She didn’t have to wait long for a woman to duck her head out of one of the rooms at the back.

“Doctor Nour Ayesh?” Alana said.

“Yes,” the woman answered, coming forward. “You have an appointment?” she said, searching the room briefly around Alana for a pet that could belong to her.

Wearing a long dark cashmere coat, with high heels that bundled her toes tightly, her hair woven in a braid held against the side of her neck, Alana didn’t seem to own a hunting dog. Yet she recalled with distinctive clarity having run in the woods near Will’s home, with his dogs. The memory had a gloom to it that she hid under a polite smile. “No,” she said. “I have a few questions.”

Dr. Ayesh’s eyes flew to the man with her, grim-faced, standing stiffly by the door. “I was expecting the police. Is that you?”

“You didn’t contact the police?”

The veterinarian paused mid-motion in taking a strand of hair behind her ear, then shook her head. “It was just a break in. It happens all the time, I called my insurance.”

Alana tried to measure how much of what she heard were lies and how much were what Dr. Ayesh felt was best to say, in good faith. “If I called for someone to come in here and take fingerprints, we wouldn’t find Hannibal Lecter’s anywhere?”

The other woman swallowed and walked back, until she was behind the small counter. It had an old, solid beige cash with a glass screen were amounts showed up in small blue digits. “You know he was here. If you’re here.”

“He told you I would come,” Alana said.

“He told me a woman may come.”

Alana reflected that she would have preferred Hannibal to leave dead victims after him. Death meant closure. It brought a clear sight of what was to fear. This, Alana thought, staring at the two chairs, the tall plant in the corner and the dotted wallpaper, was an open mouth through which madness could come out, in whatever form. “How much did he give you?”

“A little over 50,000,” Dr. Ayesh said. “He asked me to show you someone,” she said, then, more hesitant.

A deep frown creased Alana’s face. “Someone?”

Dr. Ayesh brought her in the room at the back where the smaller animals were housed. There was a sink, a counter, cages with three cats and a bird. On the counter, there was another cage, with a hamster inside. It had bright red fur and was currently sitting at the bottom of its spinning wheel, with a cast on one of its legs. “What’s his name?” Alana said.

“Gold,” Dr. Ayesh said. “His owners don't want him back. I'll keep him.”

Alana pursed her lips and she glanced again at Gold, not spinning, nudging the splint on his leg, not bigger than a bobby pin. “That’s all?” Alana asked. Nour Ayesh nodded curtly. “Was there someone with him?”

“Graham, yes,” the veterinarian said. “What happens now?”

Alana had taken out her phone, the clear light from it on her face hiding the precarious mixture of feeling with thought. “I’m calling the FBI.”

Dr. Ayesh took a step back. She lifted a hand in warning. “I’ll say he threatened me.”

“I’m sure he did. In his way,” Alana said. “It’s not to report you. You need to be in witness protection.”

 


	29. 29.

Funerals reminded Clarice Starling of childhood. The singing cohesion and the static moments, bound together in something more than a memory and less than a life. She had sat by the closed coffins of her dead parents, alone. Sometimes the lady from the funeral home came at her side and put a hand on her shoulder. Clarice felt her compassion like a thick cloud of moisture. She wished she could get away because she could not cry here. The lady found it very courageous.

The Marlows' house was surrounded with police cars again. They waited like luminous insects, the stinging blue and red of the lights revolving steadily. There were traces of police chatter on the radios, but Clarice felt it like silence. She entered the house with the slow, heavy notes of the organ, echoing in her head like in an empty belly of wood. Local police were there with coffee. Agents Price and Zeller were there with gloves and their material in a slim trunk.

“Where’s Jack?” Zeller said.

“I couldn’t reach him,” she said. “The OIG has appointed me as your superior for the time being.”

Price and Zeller looked at her, then at each other, then Price frowned, while Zeller bowed his head. “So our time’s up?” Price said.

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’d have liked to tell Jack first.”

Zeller turned to Price and gave him a smile, set at the common border of sad and playful. “A last ride into the sunset,” he chided. “Let’s do this.”

The room where they had found the head was nearly empty. What remained of the furniture was covered in white sheets and had been pushed to the sides. Another team was already dusting the windows for prints. Three spots on the ground were marked with numbers, but Clarice couldn’t make out the trace left exactly. Hair or blood, perhaps.

The head was in a small pool of thickening liquid that didn't exactly look like blood. An equivalent of formaldehyde maybe, Clarice pondered, given the yellowed color of the skin. The eyelids were sewn shut, as well as the mouth. The ears were filled with white cotton, red with dabbed blood from a possible internal injury. There were no signs of trauma to the cranium. The skin to the head had been carefully severed: where it rested on the floor, the edge had been curled, perhaps curled in on itself, as if embroidered.

In her mind, cases were starting to become an abstract construction, all pieces layered. She saw them as transparent and crystalline, strings of words, numbers and data that tacked on the water of the world. They superimposed until something like a shape started to come out. Eventually, their transparencies aligned and gave way to light, fracturing it in the right fashion to form something translatable as an explanation. This crime scene was meticulous and minimal. There was an ease about it, beneath the care.

Zeller set up the tripod for the camera. “Freddie Lounds won’t stop raving about this one,” he said.

“She feels singled out by the killer because he sent her the picture as well?” Clarice asked.

“You bet.” Zeller said. “Like the good ol’ Ripper days.”

“Is she cooperating with the investigation?”

Price had begun placing tape in a square around the head, dusting it for footprints. “50 bucks she’ll ask access to the crime scene in return,” he told Zeller.

The other Agent grinned. “Nope. 50 bucks she’ll ask access to everything.”

Price reached out with a clamp to clasp a hair from the head. He jerked his hand back. “That’s strange.”

“What?” Zeller said.

Price turned to them, eyes narrowed. “Do you smell anything?”

“Dust. Nitrile from the gloves. Rubber,” Zeller listed.

“And where are the flies? With this advanced decomposition, we should have larvae.”

Zeller’s features were struck with a mix of surprise and horror as Price took off his gloves with a snap. “What’re you doing?”

At the forehead of the victim, a curl of hair clung to the skin. Price’s index finger touched the skin and dug in. When he detached it, soft, creamy material was attached to his finger. He brought it to his nose slowly and sniffed curiously. Zeller watched, petrified, as Price brought his finger to his mouth and licked from it.

“You put the crime scene in your mouth,” Zeller whispered.

Price licked his lips. “It’s cake. Literally.”

Zeller stared at Clarice, mouth still gaping. “He put the crime scene in his mouth.”

Price finished sucking on his finger. “Vanilla cake, with caramel.”

 

* * *

 

Will found Robertas Lecter in the study. He was by the window and placed down the book he held when the door closed. The pictures and documents from the 1984 file were still spread out on the table. No lamps were on in the room even as the afternoon ended and the light imperceptibly walked into dark. “You’ll never let us go,” Will said.  

Lecter turned around. He was stern and placid. “I will never let her go.”

Pacing to the right, near the tall bookshelves, Will nodded, flexing his hands. “And we know her.”

“I am reduced to collect whatever atom I can find that can help her retain her shape,” the other man said quietly. It was a confession, only insofar as his mind was so bare that opening it further only gave it a monstrous shape.

In Will’s mind, it appeared instantaneously. Maybe it shouldn’t be thought of in terms of neurons and electricity. The idea of contact and impulses traveling was in itself too complex to express the speed of it. It was chemical. Molecules binding when heated. Solids liquifying. “There is a way to come closer to her,” Will said. “Would you want to know what it feels like?”

“What it feels like to what?”

Stopping at Count Lecter’s left, Will joined him in staring outside. There was the field and, at the far end, after the grass, there were the woods, dense and gray. The light seemed to die inside, between the branches and the humid ground, and the darkness was prowling out. “To die,” he said.

Lecter’s voice was absent, as if he had left only his eyes and lips here, and taken everything else inside, flesh, blood, skin, dismantled. “Why do you think I would want that?”

“You’d know how she felt.”

“I would die,” Count Lecter said, an eyebrow briefly raised.  

Will’s wool shirt still smelled dimly of the outside. The odor was clearer here. “You don’t think death matters,” he said.

Somewhere behind him, the door opened noiselessly and Hannibal slipped inside. In the gray twilight, only the white of his eyes and of the collar of his shirt could be seen. The rest, all tones of black, moved nimbly along the walls. He went around the desk and circled the room on the right.

With a tilt of his head, Robertas looked out from the corner of his eyes, at a point over his shoulder, which Hannibal had almost reached. “You want to kill me,” he said.

Will closed his eyes. Even if his shoulder was almost healed, he thought he should rely on his left hand. “I think I want to kill you much less than you want to die,” he said.

Detaching from the shadows, Hannibal came forward smoothly. “How do you think of him, Will?” he said.

The face of Robertas Lecter became blurred. Behind Will's closed eyelids, _it shifted into other shapes and began to hollow out until it became like a lantern, lit from the inside, its mouth and eyes absent. Inside something fluttered, wings beating, tiny chests rising feverishly, claws holding on to straws and mud, smells of forests and skies._ “Like elaborate need, stronger for the more walls it builds, even if they crumble. The need to keep what he loves trapped into this love,” Will said.

Hannibal cocked his head, curiosity visible in his eyes, but buried in the cold attention he observed his uncle with. “Is it such an unrelatable need?”

“I didn’t lie to myself about what I wanted to hold inside,” Will said.

“Things are easy to ignore until they blossom.”

Robertas Lecter stood between them, listening intently. Will's features softened. “He has built his ignorance into a glass-walled palace where death is cheated, its sight avoided, persons becoming ghosts and flesh becoming air,” Will said.

“Did you hope he would want to kill me?” Hannibal asked him.

“He doesn’t,” Will said. “He wants the echo of her there is in you. To deprive you of that.”

“Until I fade and become part of his memory alone.”

Will’s eyes returned to Robertas Lecter. He couldn’t unsee it now: the cage that his head was, never again opening up, its walls only ever growing more bars. “I can show you death. You can see that,” he told him.

Robertas Lecter’s expression changed and the colorless dream that sat behind his eyes took a starker shape. Will brought his hands up slowly. The other man kept staring on them as they neared his neck. Hannibal observed as well, taken in the sight of Will’s fingers closing around his uncle’s neck. Will's face showed nothing save for care and openness as he began to tighten.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Will's thumbs were crossed under Robertas Lecter’s chin, the heels of both his palms digging into the skin where the trachea dove under the collarbones, compressing the airway without crushing it. Eyes locked with his, the older man breathed until he couldn’t inhale at all. Then he simply held his breath and a thoughtful look came on his face, as if he took Will's offer into consideration for the first time.

Will knew the other man would fight him. Although it did take longer than he would have thought. As Robertas's eyelids began to flutter and his lips to quiver, the blood not leaving his face and darkening its features in the near-night that filled the study, his hands began to search for Will’s arms, fingers clenching. They gripped Will’s forearms and pulled at the clothing, but Will was stronger. He backed the older man against the window and pressed him against it, cracks forming at the corners of the window panes like webs.

Despair swelling into strength, Robertas’s hands closed around Will’s wrists.

Hannibal had moved back slightly and kept watching, eyes now on Will instead of on his uncle. Something neared fascination in the dark irises there and engulfed Will in heat and tightness until he felt like he was the one being strangled in all parts of his body.

As Will's gaze let him go, Robertas Lecter slid his left hand upward along Will's arm. It reached his neck and Will tilted his head back. But it was too late. The other man dug his left thumb deep into the freshly healed cut in Will's cheek. The stitches were out and the edges of the wound sealed, but the fingernail pierced the flesh slowly. Blood slid down Will's throat like a warm caress as the digit went through the skin.

He felt the blade _hold him off the ground again, the digging of its edge into the bone of his face as he was thrown through the window. The glass around him shattered, just as the tiny cracks in the windowpanes erupted in denser webs and paths_.

Arms closed around him from behind and pulled him back roughly. Both him and Robertas Lecter fell to the ground, Will tangled with Chiyoh and the Count on his knees, gulping and hissing.

“He saw it,” Chiyoh whispered in his ear. “He did.”

 

* * *

 

Sixteen miles from Robertas Lecter’s house, two miles out of the woods, Jack Crawford was finally able to get the Newark field office on the line. In his gut, something twisted that was not instinct nor years of training, but a type of temerity that he had always held captive, the thing that wouldn’t snap under the wind but only bend and hold a vengeance. For the first time, he heard the words. As part of a coming disciplinary hearing, he was expected to check in his badge and gun. No need to say, he could not ask for assistance of any kind.

He leaned back against the car door. The winter wind blew some snow and dust from the road on his legs. Jack looked down at himself and saw nothing.

It was as if all traces of Bella had left. It was as if the memory of the bridge in Italy, the dangerous shimmers on the river, the swallowing echoes of the waves – all of this had become gaunt and lost. It wasn’t like falling as much the ground being lifted from under his feet.

On the phone, the agent in Newark called him out. Jack didn’t answer. The man just spoke louder. He told him to stay on the line, that the OIG wanted a word with h-…

Jack hung up and clicked his phone shut, slipping it back into the pocket of his coat. He couldn’t think of Bella. His mind became empty and savage when he did. Was that forgetting? He could think of Clarice. But he opened the door and slid into his car seat, heavy, weak and rigid.

For the first time in years, he thought about what he could do and the answer took some time to appear to him. That alone worried him.

 

* * *

 

_There was something in the way Hannibal adjusted in the seat, in the back of the FBI SUV. His hands were cuffed and attached to the back of the front seat, chained through a metal ring. His feet were clasped in black tie-wraps. The black road glided under the silent cars running into the deep night. “Will did good, don’t you think?” Hannibal said, as they left Wolf Trap._

_“He usually does,” Jack said. His eyes went to the rear-view mirror. He found Hannibal turned away, gaze lost in the view out the window. On each side of the car, the thin snowfall turned into horizontal lines of white and gray.  
_

_“Would you like to know what happened?”_

_For a moment, Jack pondered. “What he did that caused you to surrender?” he said. “Whatever it was, it must have been hard.”_

_Hannibal didn’t answer. He had his hands in his lap as far as the chain would allow. They rested half-way between thighs and knees. Beside him, the FBI junior agent clutched his rifle. “Don't plague yourself with regret not to have killed me when you could,” Hannibal said. “I wouldn't have gone whimperlessly.”  
_

_Jack turned around in his seat. They passed street lights that left yellow streaks on his face, darkening his eyes. “No regrets,” he said. His eyes went to the shackles that held Hannibal. “This is good.”_

_A smile nearly formed on Hannibal’s lips. “To the good times that come, Jack,” he said._

 


	30. 30.

The blood pooling under the head turned out to be a mixture of maple syrup and food coloring. It smelled bitter, but they resolved to analyze it at the lab. The problem now was to determine how to transport it. In one of the SWAT trucks, they found a metal plate, thin enough that the head could be slid on it. Meanwhile, the administrative status of the head was being debated: in the absence of evidence of death, it couldn't not be considered a body. “Don’t trash it,” Price warned the two local policemen. They maintained the head up with gloves while they pushed it smoothly on the plate. It glided in its syrup pond.

Zeller cleared his throat. “Do we need a consultant or something?” he said. “A pastry cook type-dude?”

“Don’t say it,” Price said. Their nitrile gloves had left imprints on the outer layers of what had to be identified as icing. The head was beginning to lose texture already. It had most likely been refrigerated as a whole, prior to installation.

“I mean...” Zeller said.

“Don’t.”

Zeller insisted, finger raised. “Hannibal Lecter would be exactly the type of guy to analyze this crime scene,” he said.

“Almost as if it was made to talk to him,” Price said.

Zeller turned to Clarice. She had been standing back, discussing with Homicides and the archives about possible past similar cases. “We have a copycat,” he announced.

Price tilted his head in doubt. The two policemen began to carry the head away, careful to keep the metal plate level. “Not a copycat,” Price said. “An emulator. A fan.”

“I’d say he’s eclipsed the master,” Zeller said.

Clarice shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “This isn’t made to be eaten.” The head went past her slowly. At eye-level, the strands of hair were impeccably distinct, the skin’s tone and volume was subtly rendered and the illusion was perfect. On the telephone, after she had managed to explain exactly what type of similarity in cases she was looking for, Lucilla from Homicides had asked her if it should be ruled as a crime. Wasn’t it just a bad, elaborate prank?

By the door, two more policemen waited with sheets to protect the head as it was carried into the ambulance. Price and Zeller took another one, made from an unzipped body bag and went with them.

Clarice closed her eyes. Under her feet, the road unravelled. The horizon was open. The air was breathing, even if she was frozen.

Her phone chimed. “I need a warrant,” Jack’s voice said, without preamble.

She stepped back. In the middle of the room, the pool of syrup reflected of the window, its dark red like a mirror. “Jack,” she said. “There’s something I need to tell you and I’d rather not do it on the phone.”

“I wouldn’t ask you for a warrant if I didn’t already know I was suspended,” he said. His tone had something she had never heard.

“It’s not all there is.”

There were a few seconds of silence at the other end. “They’re closing it,” Jack said.

She left the living room and walked back into the Marlows’ kitchen, bereft and deserted. On the table, there were two circular traces left in the dust by the officers' coffee cups. “Yes. The BAU as a whole. Current files will be dispatched to Homicides.”

“Who will be doing it? Prurnell?” He paused. “No, she wouldn’t...” Clarice followed him, felt the invisible phone line between them go taut with understanding. “It’s you,” Jack said.

She closed her eyes. “Of course, it’s me, Jack,” she said. “I bargained. I said I would do it if the BSU was kept active as an archive. For reference.”

Jack scoffed. “Reference.”

The silence was longer this time and it seemed like they had nothing to say to each other anymore. “I’ll ask for the warrant.”

“I wanna be there. Make it urgent,” Jack said. The words were Jack Crawford’s but the voice was only its own ghostly shape.

“It’ll depend who executes it, Jack.” She sighed. She had never asked to authority. The regret of having it thrust onto her came with the murky realization that she was good at it. It created a warmth above her stomach, not unlike nausea. “You... You have to check in your badge,” she added.

“I’ll do it in Newark, I’m not leaving,” Jack said.

“Come back, Jack.”

She felt Jack hesitate, heard his breathing echo darkly in the microphone. “Will Graham is here,” he said.

Of all the things she could have said, all the reasons she could have given, she found none that would work. Wielding power was so devoid of justification and content, that shivers ran down her back and she felt empty, like a shell of skin placed above the world to rule it. “It’s an order,” she said.

Clarice waited only one second, then hung up and placed the phone down. For a minute, she expected Jack to call back. Then she could breathe again. 

Even as she climbed into the ambulance, to escort the head back to the Quantico laboratories, she waited for the phone's ringing to challenge her. It never came and she felt hollowed, as if her place in the world was a hole cut into its clingy, buzzing matter.

Again, she just wanted to run.

 

* * *

 

The minutes ticked by and became an hour. Hannibal inspected the bruises on his uncle’s neck, then moved to Will, smooth and silent. Outside, there were still no cars in sight. Will began to think he had underestimated the FBI’s wish to let death and silence swallow them. That notion had a weight, like a tombstone.

“Do you know what goes on in your head, when you kill?” Chiyoh asked him. She stood, rifle-luggage in hand, outside the door to the kitchen. Will was sitting in a chair, Hannibal pulling the last stitch into the reopened wound in his cheek. His left hand cupped Will’s face and his right maneuvered the hooked needle. Will felt Hannibal's exhaling breath near his brow.

“You have a first-hand experience of it,” Will said.

The corner of the young woman’s eyes twitched. “I don’t remember anything,” she said. “When it happened, my mind went blank. It was as if I was just my body, not head, no eyes, no hopes.”

“You were afraid,” Will said. There was a last pull to the anesthetized skin of his face before he felt Hannibal’s hand let go of him. He opened his eyes, finding the other man’s face still near, inspecting the thickened ridges. “Fear is in your head.”

“No. It’s in the heart.”

Will frowned and tightened his sweater around him. Hannibal had cut it open from the top hem to the armpit to reveal the shoulder. Most of the last weeks’ work had been undone. The stitches had held, but blood pearled outside and the pain reached Will's fingers. “Why did you wait so long to intervene?” he asked Chiyoh.

Her face hardened. “You’re like an explosion...” she said. “I needed to wait until you had consumed your due.”

Hannibal helped him to his feet. Will’s legs wobbled under him. Robertas Lecter was in another chair, pulled at a distance from the kitchen table. The strangulation marks on his neck eyed Will. He had pulled his hands away from Lecter's throat feeling like he had just pulled them out of Murasaki’s stomach, covered in her warmth and blood. “They’ll be here soon,” he said. “They should be here already.”

“You may give too much credit to Jack Crawford,” Hannibal said.

“He’s willing to step outside of the law, when required.” Will focused on Hannibal, whose hand still held his left arm, not pressuring, but not letting go. “Especially where you’re concerned.”

“Jack may walk parallel to the law, but not against it. He could concede that to have us appear dead is the best option,” Hannibal said. “Appearances can be comforting even to those who don’t hold them true.”

Will huffed slightly. He steadied himself on the table. “That would be admitting defeat.”

“He _has_ lost,” Hannibal said. Will didn’t know how the broken Jack Crawford would be. He suspected the shards and pieces of him would have chopped edges. The man he had seen seemed not tired, but weary, still fighting, but aware his coordinated movements only managed to keep his head above the rising water.

Moving away, Hannibal took the medical instruments he had used and wrapped them in a dishwashing cloth. “This should be burned,” he said to his uncle. “In the furnace ideally.”

The older man nodded. He had barely spoken since Will had let him go. His breathing was still rasp. “There will be no traces of you in this house,” he said, eyes not on Hannibal, but on something behind him. In his lap, his left thumb twitched. The cracks of the skin still dark with Will's blood, unwashable. “What cannot be cleaned will be destroyed.”

Chiyoh had gone outside to ready the car. They couldn’t take it farther than New Jersey. Then they’d need to change it. Robertas Lecter lowered his eyes to the floor and closed them. And for the first time, Hannibal turned to look behind him, as if to make sure there was nothing there.

 

* * *

 

The news traveled the nerves of the internet faster than its optic fibers constituents should have allowed. With every screen it reached, it gained power, comments and reactions. By the time it touched the Hannibal Lecter Fan Club, it was already vibrating with the potency of its life.

It was a howling newborn in the night, bright with novelty, and it melted everything in its way. Tattlecrime had posted news that it had been contacted by an unidentified individual with a picture showing a past crime scene. Only two hours later, it had published news that it was being coerced by the FBI into ceasing all activities and had been forced to give access to its computers to allow them to trace the user from the tattling forums.

During the day, Freddie Lounds had posted updates from her phone. There were pictures of the crime scene, short films of its extensive police lines and her attempts to cross them. It was during one of these that the loyal viewers of her website saw it first. It began as a noise, became a trashing echo and soon a complex melody of answers and theories.

Lounds had caught sight of what was being transported outside of the house of the past Marlow family. It was held on a plate and not bagged, which prompted its share of hypotheses. The eyes were rolling back in the head, but not entirely, as if they tried to catch the viewer’s gaze. They seemed so vivid, one of them reflected the flash from Lounds’ phone’s camera.

There was only one good picture, taken when two officers had stumbled and dropped the sheet they used to protect it from sight. The rest were blurry.

Ardell had seen the picture on Tattlecrime three seconds after it was posted. He had copied and pasted it into a thread five seconds later. When writing down the thread’s title, his fingers lingered for a fraction of a second. In the end, he kept it simple and typed  _Hannibal Lecter?_  in capitals in the heading.

The post had sucked attention into itself like a vortex, leaving the rest of the website depleted, with echoing silences. Ardell had been moderating the additions to the thread ever since. Several posts were made trying to identify the crimes attributed to Lecter that involved decapitation. He was thinking of the two files he had found in Clarice’s things. They were still in her room. She had not agreed to put them on the website, but he thought this was too good an occasion. He opened the scanner and got up from his chair when a message appeared in his chat window. “You know I used to think you were a pretender to the throne?” THO said.

Ardell stopped. THO’s account had been inactive for a while. He must have found the head interesting. “Throne?” he typed.

“All of us expect each other to be impostors, right?”

“An impostor of Lecter would parade. That head’s not parading.”

“You bet it is,” came the quick answer. Then, “We’re sort of impostors, I guess, you and I.”

“We’re just interested,” Ardell replied. His mind was still set on the pictures from the files. He would choose the clearest for both cases, then add the first page of the written reports.

“Don't say that.”

“Being interested isn't a pejorative,” Ardell typed.

The answers were fast. They came in nervously, the words almost frantic. “Some interests are punishable.”

“This site is not for punishment of anyone. We're sharing knowledge and theories.”

For a moment, it stopped. Ardell waited a minute, then two. THO was still typing his message, the chat window said. Ardell got up from his chair and walked to the door to Clarice's room. He looked at his hand on the knob and sighed, then turned around and went back to his computer. Another message waited for him. “I'm sorry I was away for a while.”

He had known Clarice since forever. He knew she would forgive him if he did post the files. She was good at understanding. And it was why his own conscience played with his brain. “Just let me know next time,” he typed. “Or I can ask hell_raizerzz to moderate your things.”

“Please don't,” the message appeared. “He's a teenager.”

Ardell quirked an eyebrow. THO and hell_raizerzz didn't seem the type to talk to each other at all. “I didn't even know they were a he,” he typed. “You talk to him?”

“No,” came the first answer. “He lives in Connecticut with his mother. Recently talked her into letting him getting his brow pierced.”

This time, Ardell got up to step away from the screen. The sensation that he was watched was difficult to ignore. It wasn't the first time someone from the website turned out to be strange. Ardell himself must have been so, to a degree or another. He wouldn't pretend to know.

He leaned over his keyboard. “What do you have on me?”

The answer was long to come. Ardell expected a lot, mostly for showing-off purposes. He didn't expect it to be true. Everyone and their mother could live in Connecticut and he had no means to verify that information. But he didn't expect a paragraph either. “You've been an in-patient at Cumberland in Virginia when you were a kid because you opened up your cat. Let's be serious: it's probably why they didn't admit you at Quantico. You live with someone they did admit though. I think you like her. Your parents call you every Christmas, but you never pick up.”

His address was the easiest part. He had not always been this careful and Clarice was in the phone book. It could also have been in the big data leak in March from the last FBI highjack. It had surfaced long enough ago. Someone who knew what he was searching for would have found it. And THO did seem to be that sort of person. The rest, though, he had no idea. The best option was a break-in here, physically. It seemed improbable, because Ardell hardly left home. Cumberland was deep. His medical file would probably never be scanned or digitalized.

The more he looked now, the more the screen seemed to be a mirror, not to hide, but to show him his own image. It came out distorted, but accurate.

He typed slowly and saw no point in lying. “I was trying to help her. My cat. She'd swallowed a nail, I tried to get it out.”

“You were more interesting before you said that.”

Ardell paused, fingers stretching out in a familiar pattern on the left side of the keyboard. The screen was captured with a shutter sound in the speakers, loud in the silent room. He sent it to print, waited until it was out, then went back to typing. “Speaking of interest, what interests you in Hannibal Lecter at all?”

“I figured it was the easiest way to meet some of his old patients,” THO said.

Sitting back, Ardell took his last Red Bull can and weighted it quickly. It was empty. Why the rushing secrets? Why now? “We had two who pretended that last year.”

“I remember.”

“They couldn't prove it.”

“It seemed real. I asked them.”

“You wouldn't be sitting on some old records of his, would you?” Ardell typed. He would need to destroy all of his hardware. It wouldn't be a good afternoon.

THO sent a laughing smiley, its round face rolling and turning. “The FBI was offering good money for that a while back.”

“Who are you?”

“Same as you, Ardell. I'm curious as to what it means.”

At this point, the use of his first name couldn't surprise him, even if the letters seemed eerie on the screen, pale on the black background. “What what means?”

“Murder,” THO typed. “Lecter ceaselessly opposed any attempt to diagnose him.”

“Diagnoses are a reflection of sanity norms, not of insanity itself,” Ardell replied. When he pressed enter and saw the words come up in the window, they seemed devoid of any sense suddenly.

“Most of the time, they're just boring.”

“What do you want it to mean?”

“Now that's a good question. We want stuff to mean stuff so much we can't really help ourselves. Whizzing like flies. I guess searching keeps us busy.” THO seemed less hurried now. Ardell took another screen capture. He figured it would be best to keep him talking, but he didn't know how long he could or should do it. His phone was charging at the other end of the room.

“You're not searching,” he typed quickly. He got up and grabbed his phone from the charger on the nightstand.

He found another message when he sat back. “You're saying you a lot. It's offending to postulate intentions.”

“The site just aims to gather information on what the media make Hannibal Lecter to be. We don't pretend to know why.”

An even longer pause. “Now, I feel excluded when you say we.”

Then he left the chat and Ardell stared at his phone in his palm, his heart beating along the steady rhythms of panic.

 

 


	31. 31.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The Lightest Way's [chapter 6](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5127935/chapters/12039080) takes place between this chapter and the previous one. 
> 
> 2\. You pro fanficcers who write as they post are all queens and goddesses. Just the cleaning and editing is sucking the life out of my every weak cell.

As soon as Jack returned to Quantico, Clarice Starling got started with the phone calls. It took her four hours. A few, back and forth from the Academy Registration to the Bureau personnel, to confirm her status. Her temporary badge, renewed by Prurnell, cleared her for investigative duties, but not for legal ones. In the process, she had to admit to a young lady that she was indeed registered to pass the exam in six weeks, that it must have been a mistake that her name wasn't on the list. She had used the website, she said, as she had been told to do. The woman on the phone was cheerful and benevolent. She registered Clarice's name for the exam, she even gave her her group number, and only then could Clarice call the Justice department.

At Justice, they asked to speak with her superior officer. Jack, who sat in a corner of the room, shook his head. His clothes were rumpled from the car ride and he had his hands on his knees. Clarice said she had no superior officer, that she had been authorized as a Special Agent directly by the OIG. Once she obtained that the OIG should call the Justice department, and that a state warrant should be issued in New Jersey for the property, belongings and person of Robertas Lecter, it was morning.

The Newark antenna executed the warrant a little before noon. Through Clarice, Jack had insisted to have a video feed. Newark refused, but offered to have them on the line with someone when they reached the house.

Clarice sat back. She was in Jack’s seat. He was opposite her in one of the visitors’ chairs. The phone was on the desk between them. For minutes, the red light of the line beeped silently while they waited. The day had crept into the office. It smelled of the coffee they had been drinking. The air was stale with dead promises and empty aches, littering the grounds, roosting in the carpets. The FBI was full of those, Clarice knew. But these felt almost like hers.

The line clicked and Clarice turned on the speaker phone. She explained the situation as best she could. It was suspected that Robertas Lecter had offered shelter to his nephew Hannibal and the FBI consultant Will Graham. She glanced at Jack. An agent had reported a sighting of someone he believed to be Graham at the house. Robertas Lecter had not cooperated with the FBI – of his own accord or because he was threatened in some way was undetermined at the moment. Robertas Lecter was also wanted to give information about the identity and role of a young woman believed to be a witness in the death of Francis Dolarhyde.

The Agent had a strong southern accent. Not Texas, like Clarice, but something lighter, with the _r_ s less slurred. New Mexico was her best bet. “I thought they were presumed dead,” he said.

“Well, presumed carries a trace amount of uncertainty,” Clarice said.

He snorted. “A trace amount. You're funny.” There was some noise in the back. Car doors closing. “Violence expected?”

Jack leaned forward. “Crawford here. No, Agent, they've left.”

“You the one did the sighting, Sir?”

“Yes.” His eyes met Clarice's over the phone. Hers were determined, stronger than he remembered. His were detached, starting to let go of things already. “Someone I believed to be Will Graham,” he repeated sternly.

“You worked with him, Sir. Was it a positive ID?”

There were moments in Clarice’s life, few and shimmering, when ideas became as clear as if they were feelings or things. She could touch them and feel them encasing her, hugging tightly. The idea of subdual is what she saw in Jack Crawford. It had the beauty of dawn, taking you by surprise, moving your metabolism into waking and chasing the dreams away. It relaxed the muscles and soothed the unease of having to defend your views, or fight for your place. It took Jack Crawford like a storm of stillness and brought him down back to Earth.

“I can’t say for sure, Agent,” he said. “Look for fingerprints, DNA samples. Anything that catches your attention.”

“Will do, Sir.”

Jack pressed the speaker phone button off and they listened in silence to the anonymous ruckus of warrant execution. Feet in the gravel, orders to have weapons at the ready. It was a small team, 4 or 5 agents, maybe not dressed for the field. If asked, Clarice thought, Jack could always say he couldn't claim a positive ID on Graham so as not to delay entry in the house. Because knowing Will Graham and possibly Hannibal Lecter could be inside would have required more men, equipped for an arrest of dangerous criminals. On the other hand, Jack could also be blamed for reckless behavior in not warning them.

In New Jersey, someone answered the door and the FBI presented its warrant. There were steps, heavier now that the boots echoed on wood. Then, there were discussions at a distance from the microphone. Somewhat hesitating, somewhat worried. Then orders were given.

“Agent Starling, we have a problem,” the New-Mexican Newark Agent said.

“What is it?”

“The person on whom we should execute search as per the warrant is injured. He's at the moment waiting for an ambulance. Should we coordinate with the emergency services here?”

Jack had jumped to attention, eyes narrowing, moving closer to the phone. “What injuries?” Clarice asked.

“Not life-threatening, Ma’am. But serious,” the Agent said. “He, uh, apparently stuck his left thumb in the wood-chopper. It's gone up to the knuckle.”

Clarice frowned. “No traces of violence?”

“We found a window with some panes broken, but they told us it was a flock of birds.”

When Clarice looked up from the phone, Jack had turned away. He was elsewhere already. Maybe in New Jersey, she thought.

 

* * *

 

_Will returned from school under April’s angry gray sky, tense with rain. The humid air was thickening with moisture and seemed heavier the closer he got from home. It would be any day now. His father had lost his job at the Vicksburg docks two weeks ago._

_He came into the small house his father rented and found two bags packed near his bedroom. He found his father in the kitchen, wrapping plates and glasses in old magazines and putting them in boxes. Moving often made for a scarce living. They had little and they felt it was alright. Will didn't feel like he lacked anything. It was the kind of thing he would only understand later._

_They put their boxes and bags on the boat that night and traveled during the whole day. In the evening, Greenville was there, brushing against the paling mauve sky. The new house was a lot like their previous one, just a lot smaller._

Its walls were boarded in washed-out wood, old, but solid. The trees were so closely gathered around it, their longest branches brushed the walls. There was a porch on the front, partially hidden behind the lowest branches of two ash trees, tall enough that their tops seemed to waver and dance in the sky above. Chiyoh found the keys, as agreed, in a metallic magnet box attached to the underside of the window ledge, behind what seemed to be a patch of moss.

Will climbed out of the car, clumsily. Depending on where he focused his mind most, his arm and his cheek ached in turn with the depth of old wounds, as if the surge of new blood in damaged tissues generated not only pain, but also the memory of all ancient sufferings, back to the day his bones had grown into shape.

The porch was ordered. There were two chairs in a corner, the paint peeling from their backs and legs. It was solid but hadn’t been cleaned since the past summer at least. Against the walls of the house, the dead leaves were still cramped in frozen piles. Hannibal had slipped out of his own place in the car, eyes narrowed at the stern facade in front of them. “How long have you owned this place?” Will asked him.

“By agreement, since two this afternoon,” Hannibal said. “Starting at midnight today as per the contract.”

Chiyoh disappeared inside with a flashlight. The white ray floated, dim behind the windows, in the darkness, like an insect, fluttering and nervous. Above Will's head, somewhere over the trees, a gull cried.

Will frowned. After their short stay at the truck stop near the shore, they had been going steadily south and inland. In between bouts of sleep from the painkillers in the car, he had noticed the landscapes changing, maybe Pennsylvania.

He circled the house and dove into the woods. In the distance, behind him, he heard Hannibal follow. The winter grounds of the forest were silent. He felt welcomed, but that feeling faded quickly as he walked. Only a shadow of it remained, and with it the sentiment of agreeing never to have a home again.

Barely fifteen minutes away from the house, he found the shore. It was a lake, or, he noticed as he craned his neck to the right, beyond the sky-high pines there, a bay. There was even a wharf, lodged into a natural embankment.

“You like the water,” Hannibal said, a few steps behind him.

“I do.” Around Will, the oversized coat still smelled like Hannibal, but that could have been in his head. “What do you like?”

Hannibal’s shoulder caved slightly when he exhaled. “Banal things have a striking clarity, at the moment. The cold, the light. Having the keys of the door that I close behind me.”

“You aren’t usually content with simple things,” Will said.

Hannibal walked past Will, until his feet reached the last of the ground before the water. There was no beach, no pebbles. The dead grass and the snow stopped abruptly and gave way to lapping waves. “I recently had the occasion to find out what is important in my life. You’re important, Will.”

Will swallowed. It was hurting his cheek again. “I said that to Abigail.”

“You meant it,” Hannibal said.

Above their heads, the gull circled above the waters and stopped clumsily into the peak of a pine. Snow fell in a white rush. “Did we pass through Pennsylvania?”

“We did.”

“It’s the Susquehanna River,” Will realized. “Leading into the...”

“Chesapeake Bay.” Hannibal paused, considered the bird above them. “Do you think it’s bad taste?”

Chiyoh emerged from the woods behind them. She aimed at the gull. “I suppose taste is relative. Gulls have grown to eat rotten fish. They still taste good on their own,” Will said.

Hannibal squinted against the sun. The shot fired and the bird fell through the branches.

 

* * *

 

It had been long since Miriam had slept late. Her dreams often woke her. That morning, she opened her eyes with fleeting images behind them. It seemed irrevocable now: the more time passed, the more she remembered. It was like chipping at a stone wall with bare hands. She had managed to detach parts and now the rest wanted to crumble.

She sat up in bed, gathered her pillow against her chest and took her phone from the nightstand. She pressed the button and it rang silently.

“Hello Miriam,” Bedelia said. Miriam didn't answer and stared at the ceiling. “Are you there?”

“I'm not sure it's a good plan,” Miriam finally said.

“We have only begun to discuss it,” Bedelia said. “If you want to come to my home today, we can discuss it further.”

Miriam closed her eyes. She had tried to remember as best she could, but it wouldn't materialize. She recalled trivialities. Walks along the shore. Preparing food. Reading and reading for days on end until her mind vacated her body. Waking up in a basement. She could see Hannibal Lecter's mouth move, but no matter how she tried she couldn't hear the words. “No. No, it's fine. I...” She took a deep breath. “I wish I...”

“You envy me,” Bedelia said. “It's normal.”

Inside Miriam, something had hardened continuously. It seemed to have reached its breaking point and moved into frailty. “Envy doesn't begin to cover it,” she said, quietly.

“Do you have violent thoughts, when it comes to me, because I remember my time with him?” Bedelia asked, after a moment's silence.

Again, Miriam searched her mind and again found it frozen in its perplexity, its intricate folds and its broken windings. “I don't think I would know what they'd feel like,” she said.

“Violence is different in each of us. You think it manifests as resistance in you, but you may be wrong.”

“I know,” Miriam said. She hung up, slid out of bed and began to brush her hair before her shower.

 

* * *

 

Mirelle waited for her when she stepped out of the bathroom. “How long have you known our phone was bugged?”

She didn't sound angry, but a novel mix of disappointed and surprised. “About a month,” Miriam said. She had suspected it more than known, in fact. From the moment she was convinced that Jack knew, she was also certain that he was investigating her. He had come to her only after failing to find anything out on her. But then, she had lied. “How did you know?” she asked.

“I called the phone guys about the outage from the storm the other night. Spoke with Karen, I was in school with her.” Mirelle shook her head. Her hair was loose, it was round and wild around her head and made her seem angrier. “She told me there was something going on.”

Miriam nodded. The water from her tied hair slid down her neck, between her collarbones, down to her stomach. She wasn’t wearing her prosthetic arm and her thick robe’s left sleeve hung empty from the elbow down.

“You’re a teacher,” Mirelle went on. “Why would they bug your phone? My phone?”

“It’s about Lecter. They think I’m communicating with him.”

Mirelle frowned and took a step back. She was close to fear now. “Are you?”

Miriam felt something twitch in her chest. “I suppose I’d have liked to talk to him.”

“That’s not an answer.”

It had grown harder and harder to hide things from Mirelle. They didn’t share a lot: living space, kitchen, the basic needs and events of their lives. But Miriam felt that lying now would be like ripping something out of herself, something crucial, like her entire skin, as if she would be more naked if she hid the truth. Yet she did. “No, I didn’t,” she breathed. She couldn't look at her. “It should stop soon. It’s just the rules, they need to make sure.”

Mirelle’s eyes were shining. “Make sure you’re not insane?”

“Yeah,” Miriam said.

Her roommate took another step back and crossed her arms. Miriam could see the trust falling between them, its fragments exploding as they hit the ground. “Could you dine out on next Friday? I’m going to have Karen for a meal.” Mirelle wiped her eyes. “Thanking her for the info.”

 

* * *

 

The human neck wasn’t very complicated if treated like a fruit. The outer layers, skin, fat and fascia were the most striking to remove. People would stare at themselves in the mirror and eventually, their head seemed to float above their body, with only the organs pulsating beneath. The blood swelling in the arteries and veins. How thin the vessels, bones and tendons were, once the flesh was removed. The vertebras were white, extremely so. It was always a surprise. They could share the discovery. It was a color very difficult to reproduce in the aftermath.

At that point, most of them wondered why they weren’t in pain. They were scared alright. But it wasn’t like the first time. The point was not to hurt, only to provoke enough tension and jitteriness to produce genuine answers.

The chair had taken him a while to design. He had perfected the set-up by now, but it still required adjustments for every person. He'd need proper measurements.

 


	32. 32.

 

 _Lustrous_  (adj.): A type of brightness that some varnishes and glazes possess, defined by how uniformly light is reflected.

 

* * *

 

Jack Crawford parked his car in the near-empty underground parking at Quantico. Every movement he made was stark in the silence deep and bare. He met scarcely anyone, but no one asked him for the badge he no longer had. It would be shipped from Newark to headquarters in Washington, D.C., for the duration of the pending investigation, a woman had informed him. Agent Rebecca Carlyle, division director, slightly younger than him, with her hair tied in a tight bun behind her head. She had made it as impersonal as possible, but Jack knew that everyone who was active in the Bureau now had known him, or known of him, during their time in the Academy.

The BAU’s office space wasn’t even marked in its name. The labs would be used by others. All he had built here now had a strange immateriality to it. It bothered him.

In the elevator, he listened to the low cackling of the chain and felt the pull of the mechanism on the cage. There was no way at the moment to tell when he would hear it for the last time.

Stepping out, he met Brian Zeller. Both men froze slightly, politely examining a situation that had been formerly familiar.

Jack huffed and smiled. Then he extended his hand. Zeller took it in a slow shake. “What happened in New Jersey?” he asked.

Their hands let go. “Nothing happened.”

“You okay?”

“I will be,” Jack said, after a moment. “It’s a cake?” he asked. Clarice had texted him the updates. He had read it absently on his way back. Everything seemed improbable now that he had seen Will and couldn’t stop him from leaving. His thoughts were tangled, coming back to one central point like water spiraling into the drain of a sink – he had been in the same house as a free, probably injured, but healing Hannibal Lecter. He had breathed the same air, touched the same doors, walked the same floors.

Zeller nodded with a arched eyebrow. “We don’t even know who we’ll refer it to,” he said.

Jack thought of opening his mouth to say something, but it would be better not to. He knew it. His body knew it. The fatigue was thicker than the blood in him, sheerer than the cold of winter.

He turned away. Zeller hung his head and called the elevator. “We should go out for a beer or something…” he tried, when Jack’s back was turned.

Jack smiled. “I’ll take a look at the cake first,” he said.

Zeller tilted his head toward the end of the corridor. “In the fridge,” he explained. “There were fruit flies.”

The elevator arrived and they parted. The soft hum of the elevator walked along with him in the darkened corridor.

With the dim lights and the ambient murk, he caught sight of his reflection in every glass doors and walls. He reached the refrigerated room’s thick door. In the room, Clarice was sitting on the ground, her back to the wall. She had her coat on and her breath was making mist in front of her. The head was on a thin steel plate, not unlike the shining ones used for the large rectangle-shaped cakes of children’s birthday parties. Except, here, there were no summer and laughs.

On the metal gurney where it sat, there were four dead drosophilas, scattered around. “What kind of cake?”

Clarice looked up at him. He had never seen her like this. There was a hardness in her that wasn’t harsh as if she had coalesced into proper shape. She didn’t get to her feet, but reached to the file beside her and opened it with gloved hands. Jack tightened his scarf on his neck and sat beside her slowly. She began to read from the file. “The outer layer is sugar, eggs, butter, cream, alcohol, vanilla and other traces. The inner layers we’ve begun to run through chemical analysis are flour, sugar, eggs, apricots, almonds, strawberries, butter.” She looked up from the file. “No additives.”

Jack scoffed. “No human remains?”

“Not yet, not even blood. We’ve only gone through the first inch or so.” She closed the file. It was thin, like it held nothing more than ten sheets of paper. Jack knew she mustn’t like it. “We can’t mold anything on it. So we’re waiting on guys from identification to make a pencil portrait so we can run it in the databases. Facial recognition didn't pick up the eyes and lips. Texture's wrong apparently.”

Jack took the file, opened it. The words seemed foreign and lost. His thoughts were wild. His mind was going where it shouldn’t go and trying to see what would Will Graham say. Some part of it even considered what Hannibal Lecter might say, but that part was buried so deep, it was more smoke than thought. “It might not be anybody,” he just said.

The younger woman tilted her head back against the wall. There was a tick near her right eye. Jack thought of asking her when she had last slept, but he knew the answer would be that she didn’t know. “He bears a striking resemblance to Holofernes in the Caravaggio version of Judith’s beheading of him,” she said, her voice tepid and reluctant.

“Same hair, same eyes. Same mouth,” Jack agreed. The word came before he could stop them. “Any links to Hannibal Lecter?”

She turned to him with a faint smile. “Except that it’s from a crime scene Will Graham consulted on? None.”

Jack gave her the file back. She placed it beside her. “What are you doing here?” he said.

“I feel like if I go back home some more things will happen. It’s like they’re waiting for me to look away.” Her accent was coming out a bit. It stung her voice only in the earliest mornings, while she dressed noiselessly and he made coffee. “If I stay here, I feel like I can have some quiet.”

Thinking that she was better than him in all aspects, that he hadn’t seen it early enough, Jack said, “I should quit.”

“They’re expecting you to,” Clarice said. Under her coat, she was wearing her jogging tights and hooded sweater. Her running shoes were unremarkable. From time to time, she twisted her ankles and stretched her feet. “The question is ‘do you want to do what they expect you to do’?”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

She waited a moment out. Jack’s eyes were lost in the blind gaze of the head in front and above them. It looked like a lantern, mouth agape and blind eyes, as if light was about to shine through. “I’ll run a search for crimes involving references to the slaying of Holofernes. Something might turn up.”

“I thought I was dedicated. That it counted,” Jack said.

Clarice exhaled carefully. “You wanted to kill Hannibal Lecter, Jack.”

Jack stiffened. When he turned, she wasn’t looking at him. “How long have you known that?”

“It was just a hunch. I had no proof. I still don’t.” She crossed her arms on her chest. “It fits. It’s personal for you.”

There were a thousand things to say. Long ago, he had told himself that he wouldn’t let Hannibal Lecter into the parts of his mind where Bella still lived. It had failed then and failed again every day. When Clarice had kissed him the first time, he had sworn it wouldn’t reach her. She had become that, the unattainable shore of his life, where Hannibal Lecter had yet to step. But as the Earth is a sphere, he had just found that the ocean had touched the Clarice continent from the other side, where he couldn’t see. For not protecting her, even in his mind, he didn’t feel weaker, only broken. “There is a Lecter feel about this. Do you feel it?” 

And she pulled away, didn’t let him see how far it went. “It’s a head, Jack.”

“It’s not the kind of thing he would do. Not exactly,” Jack went on. “It’s the kind of thing he would find entertaining.”

Clarice moved to her feet, her breathing coming out in a sigh. Her features were less darkened now and Jack saw the deep rings under her eyes. “You’re tired. You should get some sleep,” she said.

Jack got up, flexing his fingers, frigid in his gloves. In a corner, bursts of cold came in rhythmically through a small ventilation shaft. The thermostat read 41 degrees.

“I had to register for the exam,” Clarice said, examining the head distantly.

“You’ll pass it. With honors.” Jack reached out for her. His fingers touched her forearm, through the thick blend of wool and cashmere. It was cut squarely on her, made her seem broader and thicker. “You know how highly I think of you.”

She let his fingers touch her wrist and squeezed his palm with her thumb before pulling away with one step. “Height is not what you think of me with.”

He frowned. “What’s your word for it?”

“You expect glory.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

When she talked, sometimes, her voice became lower and more precise, the words coming out of her from somewhere she couldn’t really place. He had asked her if she was aware of it. She had said it might be her lecturing voice. But it wasn’t exactly that. “Glory comprises a paternal aspect. It has something objective, something cold. I’m not precisely your craft, but I’m most certainly part of what you consider your proficiency.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack thought he saw something move. Of course, when he looked, there was nothing. The metal shelves at the back had a layer of frost on them. The head was as immobile as ever. It might as well have been made out of stone. “Do you feel like this detachment is good for you?”

The younger woman’s eyes found his. She smiled and she meant it. “It’s not good or bad. It’s just there and I can’t pretend it’s not.”

“You used to dream about the lambs.” She woke up not crying, but stunned. For the few nights they had spent together, he recalled she would only open her eyes in the night, rigid in bed, then slip out and sit in the chair in the corner, knees against her chest, and wait for dawn. It found her cold and gray. “Did they stop screaming?” 

She went still for a moment. That same stillness, he thought, as when she waited for the day, knowing that it wouldn’t be better. She shook her head. “You never told me what you dreamed about.”

Jack huffed gently. Bella used to say that he had the most boring dreams ever invented. _She tested the whipped cream, then licked the spoon. “My thinking is you don’t dream at all,” she said. “Your brain doesn’t go to sleep.”_

_“Oh it does,” he said. She shook her head at the cream and he whipped again. “It just browses memories, shuffles through them, select one and play.”_

_She looked at him with the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. But then again. In his mind now, she was always smiling. He wondered if he would ever remember her angry. He wished he did. This slipped away too._

He opened his mouth, but something caught his attention. He moved closer to the table, certain this time, that he hadn’t seen nothing.

Clarice frowned.

Jack leaned down until his eyes were level with the man’s head. Its eye was shaking, with short, irregular spasms. Clarice held her breath while she watched, beside him.

The eye begun to dig into the cheek’s softer texture. It gave way and nearly fell out, stuck in the icing, the color from the iris streaking the skin-colored glaze on the nose. In the place where the tear duct would have been, three maggots pushed their way out, twisting lazily. Two fell onto the metal plate, one attached to the lip of the cake head.

By the time Jack and Clarice had stepped back, four more came out. Clarice went out of the room in a flash, while Jack leaned down again, trying to peer at the vicious movement inside. He saw only shadows inside.

The door closed behind him. Clarice had come back with a large knife, used in autopsies to incise the thorax when the breastplate was damaged and couldn’t be sawed open. She stepped behind the table and slid the tip of the knife in the head’s cranium, where the foramen of a child would have been, forever open onto the world. She pushed the blade down until she had slid the cake in half, between the eyes. More maggots clung to the knife.

With gloves on, she took hold of each half and pushed them apart. They were cold enough not to break apart.

Inside the head, where the brain would be, struggled over a hundred maggots, tightly wrapped around three rotting pieces of red. They fell on the table, as if out of a gift-box, with a splash of blood.

“This isn’t like Lecter,” Clarice said. “It’s a lie. Lecter doesn’t lie.”

 

* * *

 

_The session was almost over and Mr. Rubin’s eyes had begun darting to his coat from time to time. There were no evidence of tics, no particularities or indication of difficulty socializing. Once the object surrounding Mr. Rubin’s visit had been exposed in its jar, they had talked about the chiaroscuro paintings, their use in popular culture. Mr. Rubin seemed especially interested in the role of varnish in obtaining the required darkness in the paintings._

_“It must have smelled,” he said. “Think of it, the yolks for the color and the whites for the glaze.”_

_“Smell was part of the art. Challenge the nose to better ravish the eyes.”_

_After a moment, the conversation had died down. Mr. Rubin was still unwilling to talk about his lover whose head was in the jar. The preservation seal must have been tightly put: the formaldehyde’s smell was not perceptible to Hannibal at all. He had begun to discern the smell of something sweeter, something vaguely candied. He wondered what it was._

_“How often do you lie?” Mr. Rubin asked him. They had both sat down in their seat. Mr. Rubin was on the edge of his and Hannibal was leaning back in his, legs crossed, waiting for things to unfold, as they would. Mr. Rubin had come here as the aggressor. There was a plan into his mind, ticking into place. It would come in the open soon._

_“I try not to.”_

_Mr. Rubin didn’t scoff, but tightened his jaw, as if he had suddenly been inconvenienced or displeased, although he was polite about it. Perhaps he had expected another kind of reaction from an object long studied. Perhaps he realized he had not studied enough. “It’s the agreeable answer, isn’t it?”_

_“I try to be true in all things I do. Civility is socially required. If not we would eat each other in the wild dream that is nature, unwatched.”_

_Mr. Rubin seemed interested again. “That’s a nice way to put it,” he said. “People use dignity and courtesy to inflict humiliation, knowing that you won’t hit them… What do you do when that happens?”_

_His thoughts carried him to the man he had last killed. It was among the first of his patients in the psychiatric practice. He spent sessions discussing his wishes to kill his wife. He claimed it helped soothing him. Shortly after, his wife began seeing Hannibal as well to discuss the rapid switches in her mood. It had been diagnosed as schizothymia, then as a personality disorder and treated unsuccessfully both times. He talked with Mrs. Leafer at length and rapidly brought her to understand that to kill her husband would be a viable option, at least in her fantasy life. A few days after he had mentioned an accidental insulin overdose as the cause of death of a patient under his watch in the ER, her husband had suffered the same fate. Mrs. Leafer had been arrested and, still to this day, sent letters to Dr. Lecter, from prison._

_“The wish to kill is not absent, but to act on it on one’s own would require considerable planning,” Hannibal said.  
_

_“Less than you’d think, actually.”_

_“If you have come here to lecture on the subject, why choose me as a student?”_

_Mr. Rubin got up and ignored his question. He had no gun that Hannibal could see. But a knife would be easy to hide. He had a scalpel on him at all times, tucked in the open hem of his dress shirt. “The first thing to do is to live a life that’s regular, routine-like. And that’s not as easy as it sounds. We’re not talking about a normal life. We’re talking a life that feeds itself, noticed in its organization.” He went to the coat rack and gestured with his scarf as he spoke. Hannibal didn’t turn around. The idea had crossed his mind many times. “Second, you need to fit in your killing. Doesn’t matter how you do it. If you want to indulge or anything, you need to clear some space for that. And you need to do plenty of it, so you don’t lose your hand.”_

_“Have you decided not to kill me?”_

_Mr. Rubin paused. In his coat, he seemed taller, broader. “You seem like a nice man, I’ll wait around for a bit.” He went back to his case and folded the canvas onto itself, then he packed the flat bag and fitted it in one of his coat’s larger pockets. “How would you do it?”_

_“With a knife.” Hannibal slid to his feet and buttoned up his jacket. He held the door open for Mr. Rubin._

_The other man nodded. “Of course. You’re a classical.”_

_“How long have you done this?”_

_“I have a head start is all that matters.” Mr. Rubin tied his scarf like he would begin a small Cavendish tie. He nodded toward the head on Dr. Lecter’s desk. “You’ going to turn it in?”_

_Hannibal’s eyes found the jar, glimmering in the light from the lamp. “What else would you have me do?”_

_Mr. Rubin arched an eyebrow. “Have a taste.”_

 


	33. 33.

The three organ pieces had been analyzed before the end of the next day. Price pointed at a small portion of the heart muscle, taken out for DNA testing. “Here is Mr. Joseph Mannheur.” His clip pencil moved to the small chunks of thymus and hypothalamus. “Here is Mr. Kyle Brett.”

“No criminal records?” Clarice asked.

“Organs don't get records,” Price answered.

“DUI for the first, nothing on the second.” Zeller looked up from the beaker in which a sample floated. “Aren’t we handing this over to Homicides?”

Clarice shook her head. Part of her mind was still on the road where she ran _each morning, going east of their apartment, then turning on Green, the gravel and the tall maple trees, until she reached the house with the pond on the corner of Stasny. Her phone had stopped her just before she entered the park. A rush of dead leaves came to her nose. She ignored the chime for twelve steps, then her calm fell behind, shed like a skin. It left her raw. It was Kade Prurnell, requested that she supervised the case if it fit the BAU’s former mandate, while proceeding to its dismantlement and dissolution._

_“The OIG has recommended the Senate to cancel funding on January 1 of next year,” Prurnell had said. “Until then, you’re in charge.”_

_For a moment, Clarice panted in her phone. Ideas formed and went, but not fast enough. How else to get funding. Who to go to. None of these things, she could do. Jack might have._

_“You’re running?”_

_“No, Ma’am. I’ve just stopped.”_

_A moment on the other end of the line. “If you want to quit, you should tell me now.”_

_“I think what I want doesn’t matter.”_

_“It will if you just run away from it,” Prurnell said._

_Clarice yanked down her headphones, arm strap and took her phone in hand. “I run on paths, Ms. Prurnell. Not away.”_

“Are we filing it?” Price asked.

“Do exactly as you used to under Jack,” Clarice said. She turned to the remains of the organs. They had been cleaned from worms and larvae. They were darkened from oxidation following a long stay in preservation. Analysis had revealed traces of formaldehyde and the thymus had most likely been frozen over a long period of time, possibly using nitrogen. “Heart and glands?”

“Thymus and heart from chests, hypothalamus from the brain.”

“Wait,” Price said. “We do have Mr. Mannheur and Mr. Brett on file.”

“What file?” Clarice said.

“Our files.” Price brought the pictures of the victims up on the computer screen. Clarice recognized them instantly.

“1998 and 2000. Decapitation with some chest mutilations. Bodies were found in too advanced decomposition to tell if wounds in the torso were pre- or post-mortem. Cause of death was asphyxia in both cases,” she said.

Price and Zeller turned to her. “To the letter,” Price said. 

“They were thought to be Ripper cases. I singled them out for being atypical.”

Zeller put both elbows on the table and leaned over the tiny pieces of red. There wasn’t much blood left. The flesh had dried in some cases. They had gathered flakes for DNA analysis. “We have a murder.”

Price leaned on the other side of the table. The organ pieces had decayed too much for them to see the type of excision. “Two old murders.”

“Someone wants our attention. This elaborate staging. The theater. The fairness, the care to announce their devotion to the work and their competence,” Clarice listed. “Or at least someone’s attention.”

Zeller handed her a cup of coffee. “Will that be your first time with the press?”

 

* * *

 

Once Dr. Bloom had contacted the FBI, things had moved very quickly. In the next two hours, Nour had called Roberto to take her shifts at the clinic. He had asked him for how long. She said that she didn’t know. She had been required to pack a few things, nothing more than necessary.

The ride to Quantico was in a black van, unremarkable but for its cleanliness. The seats inside were old and softened. Dr. Bloom sat down beside her, facing the two agents, her coat draped over her folded arm. The other woman’s private bodyguards followed, in her car, in tow, a good distance from the van.

At Quantico, Nour Ayesh was asked to place both her bag and the luggage she held in her hand in the metal detector. Her bag passed cleanly. The cage was something else. She explained what it was but it rang. When she uncovered it, Gold had crawled to the bottom of his cage, beside his wheel, tightly pressed against the bars. The agent in a blue security uniform looked the hamster over, ran the detector stick over him and deemed him adequate.

There were quarters for protective custody. It was rooms, accessed through doors on either side of a corridor and it looked like a heavily guarded college dormitory. It smelled of industrial soap. The walls were a pale green and the floors were tiled with gray. Nour was instructed to enter the first room, unpack, sit down and wait. The young lady who said it wore a black suit and her hair in a tight bun on her head. She said it in a friendly manner, but it was in the imperative and Nour felt she had little choice. She wished she had seen a lawyer.

For a half hour, she sat in silence. There were no windows. A small television in the corner showed nothing but static. She placed Gold’s cage on the table. She had begun to unpack her bag when Alana Bloom walked in, the door closing softly behind her.

“We might not stay for a long time,” Bloom said, crossing her hands before her.

“Why not?”

Dr. Bloom stepped aside, came near the bed and stopped there, eyes on Gold. “The FBI’s official position is that Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter are believed dead.”

Nour took two t-shirts out. White and stark, they joined the two dark-blue pairs of pants on the bed. She had worked a lot these past few years and, when packing, had discovered that she owned little clothes that were fit to be worn without scrubs on top of them. She swallowed tightly. “So they’re alive. What’s the issue?”

Alana Bloom sat down. She didn’t seem to trust her entirely. “As I’ve gathered, many people want the story of Hannibal Lecter to be forgotten,” she explained. “As if memory could be altered, as if Hannibal Lecter would simply slip away, like a gas, breathed in and breathed out.” She turned, a hand adjusting her braided hair. “How did they seem?”

“It was hard to tell. They were wounded, under sedation,” Nour said. “They weren’t desperate. They were mindful, focused.”

The other woman’s eyes didn’t leave the hamster. Gold had yet to uncurl and walk the floor of his cage. “Did Hannibal tell you to keep him with you?”

Nour shook her head. It was only now that she understood that this was her life falling apart. It wasn’t through the loss of footing, or through the gradual instability of things stopping to make sense. It was this lonely room, with the khaki couch and the pale green coverlet. “I called his owners before we left. They didn’t want to continue paying for him.” She took a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t think. I just took him.”

Later that evening, Alana Bloom had left Nour alone and the FBI released information that the decapitated head discovered earlier that day and formerly thought to be a dark prank was now considered part of a crime scene. Nour listened to it on the news, her pillows against her chest in the tight bed. Gold had taken to use his water bottle.

Through the door, she heard Dr. Bloom talking with another woman, Ms. Prurnell. She fell asleep to the sound of their voices.

 

* * *

 

The German lobbyist from whom he had purchased the house through an anonymous transaction in Zurich had assured it was properly stocked. It had the necessities and some niceties. Tranquil, Hannibal wrote a list for Chiyoh. He changed the sheets from cotton to percale, as a reminder of this one room in the Lecter castle, the one with Murasaki bleeding so much that it rained on him. He acquired copper pots and pans and clothing in Will’s size, thicker sweaters, rougher shirts and pants.

With Will’s wounds open again, he needed painkillers to daze him into rest. Once he was asleep, Hannibal went to Will’s room. In his bed, Will shifted and turned, but didn’t wake. It was already early morning and when the light became strong enough, filtered through the gray curtain, Hannibal took the needle and thread and began working to tie buttons that had been ripped from his shirt during the last days. It was a shirt that Will had brought back from his house.

Hannibal had been able to form an accurate portrait of the Chandel Square house in his mind, of how exactly it had begun to decay. He pictured obscenities painted on the walls, the leaking roof allowing water in until the two floors and basement were filled and cracking, bursting at the seams and washed away. He placed the rotting herbs on the plant wall in the dining room and the empty bottles and various trash, he left about in the kitchen. It was like so that it slowly decomposed and became entirely part of his mind, and no longer part of him.

It had occurred to him to do this while he was in prison, but there were things to keep in place and to steady. The walls threatened to collapse, he found, as the sounds echoed against them. Some rooms he had left unattended for too long, he found that he knew very little about anymore. He had entered these parts to find a forest of associations and wild growths of images, surrounding him until he needed to open his eyes to the pale-gray walls of the cell around him.

His fingers held the needle still, but _they had stopped moving. His eyes weren’t closed, his body was perfectly motionless so that it could sink inside his mind like in water. And at the bottom of the water, there was Will, lying in a bed of seaweed, his skin whiter than it should have been. Hannibal leaned over him, curious, inquiring into death itself. And underneath him Will kept sinking, his body digging into the bottom of the sea, the liquid sand eating it and, all the while, he observed Hannibal. His fingers were clawed into his shirt and he could not leave him at all. It was sluggish, but he disappeared into the wet sand as well._

Chiyoh’s hand before him was what he found to return to himself. It held the tablet with today’s paper loaded on the screen. It glowed faintly. 

“Someone was killed,” she said.

He smiled. “Murder is a commonplace crime.” 

“They severed his head and displayed it,” she added.

Will’s voice came from the bed, croaking. His hand held his bandaged cheek. “Where?”

“A crime scene previously investigated by the FBI,” Chiyoh said, her eyes moving smoothly to him. She wore her hair tied at the bottom of her nape. She kept on her dark hoodie most of the time. Her hands were slimmer than Will remembered. She had not talked about Robertas Lecter at all, preparing food and moving furniture silently with Hannibal. During his first bouts of sleep, Will had heard them, before he closed his eyes, cleaning the dishes. He was injured again, but Hannibal was very nearly himself again, stronger than Will now.

“Investigated by me?” Will asked.

Hannibal nodded. The screen cast a bleach light on his fingers over it. “Theresa and Thomas Marlow in 2013.”

Will frowned and moved to sit up in bed. His clothing was rumpled on him, the sheets crinkled into the faint humidity of sleep. “Starling mentioned it.”

Looking up at him, Hannibal said, “Your task will grow harder as the world tries to narrow in on us.” Then he handed him the tablet. “The question is no longer what we are, but how to contain it within the periphery of our minds.”

Will took the tablet. “I was not thinking of containment.” He flicked the page to the screen. “More along the lines of isolation.”

“You must be careful not to cut the roots’ supply in water. If the water stops, the tree dies. Its leaves fall and the birds are left bare to fight the cold,” Hannibal said.

By his side, Chiyoh had sat down to finish working on the buttons, treating Hannibal’s possessions as her own. She tied tighter knots, tugging on the thread.

The website was Tattlecrime. It provided a complete overview of the chain of events. Will’s mind tangled around the head, first thought to be cake, then discovered to hold body parts belonging to two different victims’ whose identities had not yet been released by the investigators. But it stopped on the doll arm.

When he finished reading, Chiyoh had left and Hannibal had returned to his sewing. “Thoughts?” Will asked.

“It seems as if the world agrees with you, Will.” Hannibal was done with the first button. He tied the thread carefully, then cut it with the sharp scalpel he kept on the table beside. “You should not protect it from the beasts, but rather only make sure that it doesn’t reach them.”

“I’m not sure it’s easier to keep them out than to keep us in.” Will took a sip of water from the glass nearby. He ran it from one side of his mouth to the other, then spat the bloodied water back into an empty glass, left beside the filled one. “How would you do it?”

Hannibal looked at him once, eyes as deep as the sea as they searched within. “Don’t ignore the compulsions that arise. Make sure to keep us occupied.”

“It’s difficult to say for certain that I could entertain you on my own,” Will said.

Placing the needle down, Hannibal seemed pensive. It went away after a moment. Will chased it on his face, but lost it near the eyes. Only some emptiness remained. “I consider myself entertained enough at the moment,” Hannibal said, softly.

 

* * *

 

Ardell called Clarice three times in the morning. When his last attempt went to voicemail, he clicked his phone shut and stepped into her room. They didn’t lock their doors. They never had.

As a compromise with himself, he scanned only the pictures of the decapitated bodies and let the files be. Then he posted them in a new thread, under a nickname he had just created.

Then he sat back, one leg twisting nervously. His eyes were attached to the bottom right of his computer screen, where the chat window would come up.

 


	34. 34.

_Will rang and waited. He held the file against his side tighter for a moment. Before he turned back return to his car, alone in the morning, relieved that there hadn’t been anything to hope for, for it would necessarily have faded and died, the door opened and Dr. Lecter stood there, a sweater over dress pants instead of a suit jacket. There was no tie that Will could see. Hannibal stayed still, then glanced quickly at the file by Will’s side. “The angel-maker?”_

_Nodding, Will clutched the folder. His fingers left crumples in it. A stark smell hit him, more memory than odor. “I have his brain scan,” he said._

_“How big was the tumor?”_

_Will’s nostrils could finally name the scent that had emanated from the room in a burst at the door's opening. “Tomatoes...?”_

_A fine smile touched Hannibal’s lips. He lifted his right hand and rubbed his fingertips together. “San Marzano. The smell comes from the stems and leaves. Starker in this one than in most varieties.” Hannibal stepped away from the door. “Please, come in. Show me the scan.”_

There was a garden at the back of the house _in Vermont. Molly and Will both tended to it. The tomatoes weren’t San Marzano, but a hybrid of some sort, bright and red on their vine, juicy and sweet once cut. She hated the smell the leaves left on her fingers. “It’s alkaloids in the leaves,” Will explained, once. It was a crisp morning, with a warm wind full of rain. “Functions as a pest repellent against whiteflies and mites, mostly.” His thesis work was so far behind him, it had the absent feeling of the life of his father, part unknown and part absorbed._

_The brightness of Molly’s smile filled him like the air filled his lungs, only to leave again. “You’ll have to tell me the name again,” she said._

_“Medicolegal entomology,” he said. “With a specialization in the roles of toxic substances interfering with decomposition rates.”_

_Walter came up from behind them, his school backpack on his shoulder. “Does that mean you watched decomposing human bodies?”_

_After the bloating, came the active decomposition. Larvae settled in. For hours, Will had watched donated bodies placed in warming cages, not unlike those that would house reptiles, measuring what influenced the propagation from skin to soft tissue. “No,” he lied. “We used pigs.”_

After a few days, the house was clean, if empty. There were tall windows in the living room. The first time Will walked in, he entered Hannibal’s office. _He and Hannibal were already talking. Will went to the window, turned his back on himself and Hannibal both._

_“Did you like it?” Hannibal said. “Sitting in a closed space, with nothing but you and a decaying body in the room?”_

_“I liked to understand,” Will said. “I was alone.”_

_“Untroubled by death?”_

_Will heard nothing. Behind him, Will was shaking his head, once, curtly. Nothing but truth, here, Will wondered. He had never been one to find death lewd._

_“There is nothing concerning in death, and all to be concerned about in dying. Why?” Hannibal asked, legs uncrossing, fingers lacing._

Will’s answer faded as Hannibal’s steps resounded behind him in the empty room.

“His name, although it cannot have been true, was Billy Rubin.”

Turning around, Will found Hannibal wearing the dress shirt he had repaired earlier. The buttons were well adjusted now. The fit was slightly too large at the shoulders, where he was thinner than before. Will tried to remember getting out of prison and going back home. The pieces remained apart, splayed and torn. He still wasn’t sure if this was out, and if it were out, what was inside. “Bilirubin as in hemoglobin catabolism?” he said. Hannibal nodded. “A patient?”

Hannibal stepped closer. The room was wide and open, with a high ceiling. The walls were darkened at this time of day, because of the many trees, crowded outside, against the windows. There were empty bookshelves on the wall behind him and a fireplace that had not been used in some time. In the center of the room were two armchairs on either side of a coffee table. “A referral. I only had one session with him.” The wound in his side pulled muscle and flesh as he bent down. But he felt notably stronger. Will’s wounds were keener for it. He pushed the coffee table to the side. “He had brought me a present.”

“A head?”

“In roughly the same state as the one found recently.”

“Thymus gland, hypothalamus and left ventricle?”

Hannibal shook his head and looked at the two chairs, moving them so that they faced each other. He stood back to look at his work and Will remained on the other side by the windows. “I didn’t investigate at the time. And I believe no one did.”

Will frowned. The newly shortened hems of the shirt sleeve fell in place on his wrists, at the knob. The wound in his cheek would be a pain for weeks still. The skin had ruptured around the initial hit of the blade. The muscles had been spared. He had reattached them, but the trauma had been extensive, repeated, recent. “What did you do with it?”

“And keep it as a token? A souvenir?” Hannibal looked up and offered a smile. “I do not find collecting as compelling as others.”

“You could have consumed it.”

“It came with all the appearances of preservation.” Hannibal ran his fingers on the back of one chair. A sheet had been placed on it, transparent and crinkled. It had collected months, perhaps years of dust. “It was in a glass jar and seemed to bathe in formaldehyde.”

“Seemed to?”

“I called the police department of Baltimore. They identified it for what it was: a base of marzipan, floating in syrup.” He pulled the sheet off the chair and a cloud of dust gathered in the air between them, climbing to the ceiling. “I testified, handed in the record of my conversation with Mr. Rubin. His identity was false. There was no investigation.”

His right arm still sore from the stretch to the shoulder wound, Will grasped the sheet on the chair on his side and took it down as well. “The head. Who was it?”

“A representation of his lover. Accurate or not, I couldn’t tell.”

“Had he mentioned killing him?”

Hannibal shrugged minutely. “He evoked it. But his attention was elsewhere entirely.”

“Where was it set?”

“In retrospect, I believe he wanted to convince me of the necessity of killing.”

Will exhaled and nearly smiled. Hannibal took the armchair and lifted it off the ground so that he could rotate it. It faced the window. Will considered his chair. The dark green of the material, the softer, paler seams, sewn long ago. The arms of strangers had been here. He pushed it forward and turned it as best he could, until it was beside the other. Then he sat down and Hannibal sat in his chair, beside him.

“Did he know-…?”

“He couldn’t have, although he may have been perceptive,” Hannibal said. “It was nearly twenty years ago, long before the Chesapeake Ripper.”

The antique name brought Will back to his classroom. The slides being fitted in the projector. The Ripper was an abstract object, something vicious and self-aware, inflicting horror and pain only through beauty and symmetry, with a care taken in his task, such that Will felt it echo within himself. He couldn’t call it anything other than cruelty at the time: the infinite scrupulousness of tasks planned, repeated and staged. The disdain for the victim that Will perceived only because he saw its correspondent opposite: the address to one viewer. At first, Will believed it to be God, his Creation twisted and sent back to him as a mirror, so he could look. But as the murders came and the bodies piled, Will had realized that it spoke to him as well.

He shook his head, the memories shapeless and hesitant around him.

“Your memory swallows you, Will. You insist on staying in its mouth instead of descending into its bowels,” Hannibal said. His eyes were closed and he was leaning back against the chair, his face nearly silvery in the reflection of the white winter light of outside.

“The insides might digest me.”

“Not if you know where they will lead you.”

The chair’s back came higher than the one from the seats in Hannibal’s office. It was straighter as well, encompassing, as if it readied them to take in the world beyond the windows. “My mind itself has always been a surprise in contents. More pressure and weight than direction and aim. Its images aren’t shaped, they come, rushed and total.”

Hannibal had turned to gaze at him. “It can be easier to wander and drift in places known and explored. Movement is only possible with a certain amount of restraint.”

 

* * *

 

Robertas Lecter had been checked out of the hospital a few hours ago and handed over to the FBI. His bandaged hand was on the table before him, the remaining knuckle buried under white with a spot of red. In the holding room of the Newark field office, he stared at a point in space and spoke in Japanese with his guards. He refused to speak English and, most of the time, didn't adress the FBI agents at all. They weren't sure if he was crazy or nobly stubborn. They had asked for a Japanese interpreter. He hadn’t arrived yet, having either badly translated the instructions to get to the holding facility, or simply got lost. 

With the help of an online dictionary, although frail and advertising-ridden, and of the name of Byron Metcalfe, they managed to understand he wanted to speak with his lawyer.

It was getting late. Two of his guards had accepted the coffees in the white paper cups, but Robertas Lecter had remained seated at the table, motionless and calm. The small offices were old and gray, with partitions between desks where sheets of paper curled and hung.

“Milano,” Stevet called from the back. “We’ll need to wait for the Japanese translator.”

Milano looked up from his Excel grid and got to his feet to take his head above the partition. “Why? Metcalfe can talk to him on the phone if he don't want to drive all the way up here.”

Stevet shook her head. She had a small face in the middle of a vast crown of curly blonde hair, volumized into a near sphere. “Metcalfe hasn’t been to his office for two days. His neighbor just found him in his apartment.”

“Dead?” 

Sylvie Stevet lifted both hands in an ironic gesture. “As much as you can be without a head.”

 

* * *

 

Alana’s room was nearly identical to Nour Ayesh’s own. Same coverlet, but different sheets in the bed. Same television, only a different model.

She had only been here once before, to see Freddie Lounds. She remembered how she had been afraid simultaneously for Hannibal and because of him. They had wrapped him in a crime so perfectly fitted that it could stick. She had spent the drive back home wondering if Jack Crawford was insane, if the world had started tipping on its balance. Later, she had revisited these memories wearing the shine and armor of knowing that she didn’t have to be worried for Hannibal Lecter.

The soft knock on the door startled her. She got up from where she sat on the bed. Her glass clinked lightly on the bedside table. 

Bedelia Du Maurier was there. “Good evening, Dr. Bloom.”

“Hello, Bedelia.” 

“I was denied protective custody,” Bedelia said. She walked past Alana and into the room, taking off her hat to place it on the bed. Her hands moved to her gloves. She unclasped them at the wrist and pulled on each finger in turn, to slip them off without causing stretching.

“Myself and Dr. Ayesh are only tolerated here. Nour’s account of events is still being investigated.”

“The victims must sometime defend the cruel idea that the criminal who’s attacked them does exist, giving legitimacy to the crime itself in the process.” Bedelia placed both gloves on the back of the armchair and did not sit. “Do you believe her?”

“I do,” Alana said. She finished her glass and filled one for Bedelia. “He left me a gift. There were traces of movement in his bank accounts. Do you doubt he’s still alive?”

Bedelia took the offered glass. “Why is it that you dislike me so much?”

Alana stiffened. It was as if she had turned into something frozen, or rough. Yet she felt she was not sharp enough. She had barely ever spoken to Bedelia Du Maurier, but on the few occasions she had, the older woman had seemed to take a specific interest in her, pulled toward her as if they had things in common, roaming inside. “You like your capacity to draw Hannibal Lecter to you, to sustain his curiosity. You gain pride and enjoyment from it.”

“You find that devious.”

Alana huffed quietly. “I find it scary.” 

Setting her glass down, having barely touched it, Bedelia placed her hands atop each other on the armchair and spoke plainly. “Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are alive. They held me hostage for nearly a week. Then they were taken by men who came with Hannibal’s uncle, Robertas Lecter.”

Her features turned to ice, then back to stone, then back to skin, but rigid and taut. “Why are you alive?” Alana said.

“By chance.” She blinked calmly. “Or temporarily, depending on how you prefer to look at it.” Moving before the armchair, she sat down in it heedfully.

“What did he do?”

“He threatened to eat my leg.” She reached for her glass and brought it to her lips. “The left one,” she said, marking her words with a sway of her ankle. “In your opinion, would a veterinarian be able to perform an amputation on a human being?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you see the X-Files quote in this chapter? (From early season 3.)


	35. 35.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I owe you all an apology for skipping last week's updates entirely. Life™ intervened. In fact, it pretty much clawed its way into my back in the form of neurogenic bladder acting up + panic attack at The Bay + I didn't know you could get bullied at work, but apparently you can and no one calls it bullying because hey we're not children right. Things are back into a okay format now. And, well, so much has happened in so little time in my usually lovingly eventless life, I think I must be settled with the gods of All Things Happening for a couple months. 
> 
> Second, those chapters are HUGE, so I hope they can be satisfying. We start to mingle seriously with The Lightest Way: its [seventh chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5127935/chapters/12092057) takes place between this here's chapters 35 and 36.

Expectations of speed, rhythm and variety changed in the presence of computer screens. The world became flickering lights, patches of shrinking colors and the tiny blank whiteness of the cursor on the dark background. Posts were lining up in the forums under the thread Ardell had just opened. Some of them tried to answer each other to form a coherent line of thought. Others were insignificant and automatically discarded in the flow of sputtered words. Most of them soon questioned the identity of the new user who had uploaded the pictures, some of these implying that he could be law enforcement.

Twelve minutes after being posted the pictures were published on Freddie Lounds’ website with a sardonic note. “Mysterious pictures of decapitated victims on the Hannibal Lecter Fan Club. Another leak from the FBI? Frustrated BAU staff resorting to desperate measures to make progress in a tedious investigation? Murder festival led by an admirer of Hannibal the Cannibal? Tattlecrime will keep you updated while hypotheses abound. ”

In the corner of the screen, the chat window flashed with its new message.

THO said, “We should meet.”

Ardell felt his heartbeat in his fingertips when he typed. “Why?”

“I’d love to have a proper conversation with you.” A pause. Ardell perceived it both as hesitation and as threat. “You seem to be smart.”

“What’s a proper conversation?”

“In person,” THO typed quickly. “Sorry. I’m going to have to let go of my phone now.”

Ardell frowned.

The three soft knocks on the door of his apartment caused his hands to freeze over the keyboard. He became keenly aware of his breathing leaving him warmly, like he had just run miles and miles. He left his chair as silently as he could. The apartment was old and the floors creaked under his feet. It was windy outside. The sun was coming in and out of the clouds and duskiness chased clarity.

He went to the door. Carefully, he slid forward to look in the peephole. It showed him the image of a man in his early fifties, short, not fit, glancing politely at his own feet. He appeared bent out of shape and rounder through the fisheye lens.

Ardell stepped back. He didn’t know what he had expected. He swallowed thickly and opened the door. For a moment, the man and Ardell stayed on their side of the doorstep’s invisible line. Then the man smiled broadly. It seemed spontaneous and joyful.

“Hello, Ardell,” he said.

Stepping back, Ardell found the wall behind him. “Who are you?”

“I know we don’t talk a lot.” The man came inside and closed the door after him. “I mean, we do, but we never really talk. Not about our lives.”

“Mostly, we talk about Hannibal Lecter.”

The man walked further in. He looked around calmly, listening. “Technicalities about him, actually.” He held out his hand. “I’m Billy, by the way. The Headless One, if you’d rather.”

Ardell didn’t shake the offered hand. His shoulders stiffened. He thought of weapons. They had no gun in the house. “Billy’s fine.”

Billy took off his jacket. He wore a fine sweater underneath, in pale green. He looked cozy, like a golfer on a Sunday afternoon. “I have a taser gun, in fact. If you want to come quietly, that’s also good.”

“I was wondering…” Ardell’s mind flew to his room, his phone, his computer. “If I could take my coat from my room.” His chest felt tighter, his breath was caught in his throat. He didn’t think his heart could beat at all within this sludge of flesh he had become.

The same wide smile came on Billy’s lips. “It’s not a good idea,” he said. “Besides, what you should be wondering about, and I would indeed want you to ponder that question while we ride for a bit, is – Why did you even open the door, Ardell?”

 

* * *

 

From time to time, his assistant had told the FBI, Mr. Metcalfe wanted to spend some time alone. He meant it radically: there was no one else with him in the condo he owned in a tall, pale building facing the ocean in Newport, Rhodes Island. It was supposed that the walls were so efficiently soundproofed that no one had heard him scream. The local police, assisted by the Bureau, searched the property for his head. They looked in the dark, thick bushes and peered with flashlights in the trees and the night. They walked as far as to the ocean nearby and inspected the shore. The pebbles had a shine of seawater under the moonlight that came out a blinding white when their lamps hit them. There was no head to find.

The body was first sent to the Newport morgue. The legal examiner there was a very quiet man. He did a clean autopsy under the watchful eyes of three FBI agents in suits. When he reached the heart, he found that the left ventricle had been carved out smoothly, the wound cauterized. The muscle around was mostly scar tissue now. Deeper in the torso, he found the thymus to be missing also.

Once the two missing organs had been reported, the news traveled on thin threads of air and landed on the BAU’s doorstep. The body was sent in Quantico and arrived the next afternoon. Price came in with vegan donuts, fried in coconut oil, and coffee. Zeller was already there, reading the report from the Newark antenna. He cocked an eyebrow. “Hannibal Lecter has an uncle who speaks Japanese,” he said.

“No, he doesn’t.” Price pulled on the tab of his coffee cup and a hot, thin curl of steam came out.

Starling stood near the body. Her shape seemed lither in the light reverberated on the steel autopsy tables and drawers. “Robertas Lecter was married to Murasaki Kondo until her death in 1984. He’s lived mostly in Japan since. Always refused to collaborate with us on his nephew’s case. He’s pretended to be unilingual Japanese when brought in as a potential witness for the trial, then faked dementia not to be on the stand,” she said.

Price snapped on his gloves and pulled the cover from it. The body was much smaller without its head. It threw things out of proportion. “Faking insanity as a familial pattern?” he said, examining the stitched Y-incision in the chest.

“Hannibal Lecter didn’t fake insanity.” Clarice stepped closer. She had put on gloves as well and had to tilt her head to the side to look at the wound on Metcalfe’s neck. “He arranged the discourse of those around him to make them defend that for him. He himself always denied it.”

Zeller sipped from his coffee, file in the other hand. “You think he’s not insane?”

Clarice looked up. Her face was partially hidden by the body’s neck. Metcalfe’s skin had purple streaks there, spiraling in a near-regular motif. “The only thing I know about Hannibal Lecter is that there are a bunch of things he wants people to think about him.” She frowned and it brought a wrinkle to her nose. “His being insane is just one of those. His being not insane is one another.”

Price had opened the stitches of the autopsy incision while they were talking. “What does a thymus even do?” he reflected.

“Hematopoietic cells. Immune system. Shrinks when you grow up,” Zeller listed. He turned back to Clarice. “You don’t think insanity is a thing at all?”

The younger woman reached on the table beside them for a cotton swab and dabbed a drop of liquid that pearled from the wound. “I think sanity is like hygiene,” she said. “In the 19th century, Ignace Semmelweis suggested that the simplest explanation for deaths from childbirth fever in women was that doctors didn’t wash their hands between autopsies and deliveries. His ideas were mocked and he died disgraced and poor.” She placed the swab on a glass slide. “Ideas change. It’s why and how they change that’s interesting.” She handed the slide to Zeller. “I don’t have lab training,” she explained.

“Blood?” Zeller asked.

“I’m not sure.”

The ribs parted open under Price’s hands. “Thymus and hypothalamus are glands. The ventricle makes no sense,” he reflected absently.

“And if he’s after Lecter, why doesn’t he eat them?” Zeller said. He had brought the slide to the microscope.

“He’s not after Lecter,” Clarice said.

Zeller spoke with his face to the microscope’s goggles. His mouth twisted as he narrowed his eyes. “We have a head that turned out to be a cake, that contained pieces from victims of crimes that showed likeness to Hannibal Lecter’s.” He adjusted the focus. “We have the body, with his head missing, of Hannibal Lecter’s attorney. This is personal.”

“And Freddie Lounds agrees,” Price pointed out. His right hand held the lungs out of the way to explore the small cavity where the thymus should have been.

Clarice crossed her arms. She wasn’t used to wearing a suit jacket and it felt tight against her back. “It’s the same people, the same themes. But they’re on shuffle, remixed.”

“Lecter made food out of people. So this one makes people out of food?” Zeller said.

“It probably says a lot about us that we find the second one creepier,” Price said.

Her eyes on the ceiling, somewhere above the glass-door, Clarice spoke and felt herself being lifted up and away, her words carrying her. It was cold. “Traditional behavioral patterns in murderers relating to each other are split almost evenly between competition and admiration. This is not it.” She shook her head. “This is communication.”

“Communicating what?” Zeller asked, back at the microscope.

Clarice frowned. “The sketch on the head turned up nothing, right?”

Price cocked his head, mouth twisted. “You smashed it pretty good when you knifed through it. The portraitist gave us a nice face. Facial recognition managed to find its spots, but they didn’t match anyone in the database.”

Clarice opened her mouth to speak again, but Zeller stepped back from the microscope. “This isn’t blood.”

“What is it?”

He opened his hands. “Looks like varnish…?”

“Can you analyze it?”

“Yup.”

Price cleared his throat. Clarice turned to him. He passed his cell phone to her over the body. It showed Tattlecrime.com. The main headline showed Freddie Lounds’ newfound name for the killer. “New Pictures of the work of the Cake Monster.” Under it was another title, smaller but in bold capitals. It said: “Confidential FBI Files Posted on The Hannibal the Cannibal Fan Club.” She slid her finger over the article and it linked her directly to Ardell’s webpage.

She froze. Her brain felt like it tried to chew on the information, but couldn’t quite close its mouth over the bite. It must have been something like betrayal, or like relief.

Zeller looked at her coolly. “I thought we could trust him,” he said. “Do you want to go yourself? If not we can do it.”

Clarice shook her head. “I want to go. I want to talk to him.”

 

* * *

 

Jack Crawford’s best suit was also the one he had worn at Hannibal’s trial. Its black wool had a faint shimmer to it, but not in all threads, creating a textured, almost invisible shine. He had bought it years ago from a small tailor in Baltimore. The tailor was a short and crisp Italian man, whom Hannibal Lecter had recommended. Jack recalled precisely standing in the witness booth at the trial in this suit to have Hannibal nod at him with a light smile from his bulletproof glass cage.

This morning, the jacket fell as evenly on his back and torso as it always had. It gave both bulk and slimness. Bella had loved it. It seemed to fit that he would wear it to walk out of the Quantico offices for the last time.

He had no appointment with Kade Prurnell and asked her secretary if she could fit him in between two other visitors. His curt letter was folded in three in a good envelope, lined, thick, opaque. “Agent Crawford, Ms. Prurnell is really busy this morning,” the young woman said.

He smiled. “It won’t take long, I assure you.”

He waited twenty minutes in an armchair with the weight of the years he had passed here on his shoulders. He counted them carefully, trying to get a good measure of what he would shed when walking out.

Kade Prurnell was more tired than when he had last seen her. She insisted on having him sit down with her for a few minutes. Jack Crawford agreed and placed the sealed envelope on her desk, between them. She knew what it was. “We have a reported sighting of Lecter,” she said.

“A witness? Alive?”

“She’s here. In protective custody.”

Jack’s hand went for the envelope. He hesitated. “Are you investigating it?”

Prurnell shook her head. “Word came from far above both our heads, Jack,” she said. “I agreed to have three more witnesses kept here as well, but I can’t keep them past Friday.”

“Who?”

“Alana Bloom, Bedelia Du Maurier, Miriam Lass and the main witness. A veterinarian, from Virginia.” She looked at his hand, back in his lap, then at the envelope. “You still want to let it go, Jack?”

Peering inside himself, Jack found nothing but shells and hopes. Something in him was worn out. He missed teaching. He missed the graduating ceremony for the trainees. Where had that all gone? He pushed the envelope toward Prurnell. “There’s nothing to hold onto anymore.”

On his way out, he took the elevator down to the first basement where the rooms for interviews were and, past that, the quarters for protected witnesses. Prurnell had warned the guards. They refused to let him in. He didn’t argue.

Over the guard’s shoulder, through the door’s bulletproof window, he caught a glimpse of Miriam, a kind of sad strength on her face, resolve in her eyes. He nodded to her and she smiled.

 

* * *

 

_The sound of water was overwhelming. It slipped into his ears to crack his head open from the inside. In the dark of his closed eyes, something soft went down his neck and into his shoulder, through the tiny hole that the bullet had made. Will felt it slither inside, like a snake. It only hurt a little and his mind seemed to process the feeling in a clumsy, spiraling motion, as if it couldn’t cling to it._

_Above him, the light became wicked. He saw it first in the red of his shut eyelids. He made out Hannibal’s face, stronger and tired. The man seemed more of a stranger now. Will had lost his marks on his face. It had changed near the eyes and forehead, but remained the same at the jaw and lips. The mouth had always been the same. The thought came and went with a whisper that the teeth had always waited, pointed, with oozing remnants of human flesh caught somewhere in between them._

“ _How do you feel?” Hannibal said. The voice wasn’t as caring as it had been before. The words alone brought empty memories of the same question, in the Baltimore office. It circled over Will like a vulture._

“ _I feel nothing.”_

_A smile in an otherwise blank face. There was nothing, no curiosity, no concentration, no cruelty, no enjoyment in the tense features. Just a indifferent mechanism of death. “Good,” Hannibal’s voice said, with Hannibal nowhere to see._

_Will’s lips felt numb. “Where are you?”_

_From his wound, the tweezer emerged, gripping the bullet. “You wanted me gone, Will.”_

“ _Not like this.” He reached out. Pink droplets fell down as he lifted his hand to Hannibal’s face. His thumb brushed the skin near the corner of his eye. “You’re not here.”_

_Hannibal took Will’s hand and put it back in the water, flattening its palm against Will’s chest. “That is because I’m here.” He brushed his own fingers against Will’s forehead, on the right, where the curls formed in the mist of the bath. “And here.”_

_The moist of the water_ became the weightless tangling of sheets. Will opened his eyes to the dark of the room. His breathing was shallow. He waited for it to deepen and slow down. The bright light of the Florence apartment began to fade. The golden moldings and painted walls that looked like the innards of a mythical beast became black and gray. He glanced at a corner that seemed particularly dark.

“How often do you watch me sleep?” he said.

There was a pause. Will noticed the hushed sound of pencil against paper only when it stopped. “Whenever your sleep is deep enough that my presence will not wake you.”

Will leaned back into the pillow. Adjusting to the twilight, his eyes could barely distinguish the ceiling above from the air. “You can’t draw in the dark.”

“My eyes are used to the obscurity.”

Craning out of bed, Will turned on the bedside lamp. Damp with the sweat collecting between sleep and pillow, his hair had started to curl at the back of his head.

In the armchair, far from the foot of the bed, Hannibal narrowed his eyes at the sudden white of the page. The sketchbook was perched on his left leg, crossed over his right knee. The first face had begun to be clearer, but the darkness had hidden some of its details. Now, it appeared rough and graceless. With a tilt of his head, Hannibal resolved to heighten its ugliness, albeit with the finest lines he could draw. “The arm preoccupies you more than the head,” he said.

“Miriam Lass preoccupies me,” Will said.

“She is clever.”

“She’s lost. Her mind isn’t a place.” Will arched his eyebrows. “And Jack’s smart.”

Hannibal’s eyes had adapted to the light. The black of the pencil’s graphite wasn’t as vulgar. It left slivers in its wake as he slid it upward. He nodded once. “She figured the Marlows were a Francis Dolarhyde case and sent you the picture.”

Will sighed and pushed the sheets off of him. “And I’m filled with the lone, monotonous idea that this should tell me what she wants.”

Using his index finger’s knuckle to blur a line, Hannibal watched the woman’s hair dissolve on the paper. “To remind the world of her presence. A signal apparently devoid of meaning, but telling through its sole existence. A lighthouse.” He lifted his head and found Will’s eyes on him. “Does she scare you?”

“It scares me that she might think you or I could help her.”

In Hannibal’s mind, there are echoes of a younger Will, who had refused his help, yet accepted it whenever it was given, because it was the only part of the world open to him. “Why would you want to revisit this idea?”

Some moments spent in Hannibal’s office hung between them. Will’s gaze lingered on his and left quickly, the way it used to. “Miriam Lass didn’t seem to want to remember. Like I did. Something’s changed,” he said. “What did you do to her?”

“Precisely?” Hannibal gestured with his pencil. “I kept her under sedation for some time. We talked about a variety of subjects, some benign, some not. The mysterious action of coriander on taste. Her wishes for the future. I explained the differences between piano and harpsichord.”

Will’s voice wavered slightly. “Did I do this with you? Talk.”

“No. Most of the time you were barely conscious,” Hannibal said. “The inflammation made your brain much more vulnerable than hers. In her case, I used hallucinogens and exposure to full-spectrum light, but had to resort to create artificial hemorrhagic strokes. In her hippocampus, specifically.”

Realization dawned on Will’s face like a peculiar kind of certainty, with its shade and stillness. “Your treatments are consistent in quality.” Will dragged a hand over his face, fingers to his forehead, as if he could touch the memories hiding there. “You flooded her brain with dreams and then you drenched it in blood. She won’t remember a thing.”

“She can think she remembers.” On the paper, the two women’s faces didn’t come out of the shadows. They seemed inclined to remain there and Hannibal moved the pencil’s tip to shape lines always hazier.

“Someone thinks she remembers.”

“You’re wondering why has Jack not done anything beyond contacting Freddie Lounds,” Hannibal said.

“I’m wondering how he feels with knowing there’s nothing more he can do.” Will slipped out of bed and took a shirt lying amid the twisted sheets near the foot of the bed. “When desperate, some become rash, some become angry. But not Jack,” he said. “Jack focuses.”

Will reached for the tablet on the bedside table. The light from the lamp was dim enough that the screen cast blue glints on his face. From where he sat, Hannibal saw the red, tall lettering of Tattlecrime and, underneath, the large picture of the cake of a severed head being transported.

“He isn’t angry,” Will said. “He’s probably the only one right now who isn’t.”

The shirt Will had put on was gray flannel, thick and warm. Something he would have bought for himself, he had thought when he had opened the box of clothing Chiyoh had carried to his room. He had reflected then that Hannibal must have considered this often, in parallel with the rest. The building of a domestic life, the sharing of cycling trivialities.

His eyes were drawn back to the picture on Lounds’ website. She had described the doll arm at length. And quoted a source from inside the FBI, who wished to remain anonymous. In truth, Will didn’t know what would Jack Crawford do if he became scared of Miriam Lass and not for her.

Hannibal had stopped drawing. “Can I see it?” Will asked.

Closing the sketchbook on the pencil, Hannibal gave it to Will. The drawing was precise, but its subject was not. It showed a contorted face. Another one, at the back, seemed bewildered. Both were part enraged and ecstatic. “Judith and her servant,” Hannibal said. “In some versions, the servant helps her cut Holofernes’ head. In some others, she’s only a spectator.”

Will ran a thumb against the edge of the page. The servant’s features were starting to appear. She had Miriam’s eyes, but Judith had been sketched with her hair at shoulder length, pale and straight. “Is Miriam Judith or the servant?”

Hannibal didn’t answer and rose from his seat. “It is almost morning. You should sleep. I’ll wake you when it is time to change the gauze on your shoulder.”

Outside, the sky was starting to pale. The stars would fade soon. “Do you like watching me?”

Hannibal’s fingers closed on the sketchbook near Will’s. “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

The smell of pigs had been with Margot all her life. She had never had anything to do with the meat work proper. She intended to make sure it would never make its filthy way into Morgan’s nose. Yet today, there was a hint of it outside, rising in time with the sun.

She closed her coat around her. Her breath drew patterns of mist that dissolved into the sky above and around her. Mostly, she remembered the noise the tree branches made when they scraped against the tall trucks, a caressing sound. And the deep parallel tracks, turning the snow into mud. After that, the mud blossomed into an ashen gray streaked with a pink puddle. Mason had told her that father had explained it wasn’t blood. It was some skin, organs and bones, crushed into juice and trashed, once the flesh was stripped from the body.

She answered her phone on the first ring. “The surgical equipment Mason had at Muskrat farm,” Alana said. “Do you still own it?”

Margot frowned. “Some of it. The one that wasn’t used. All of it is stored. They won’t let me sell it. Why?”

A pause on the other end. “I feel like there’s a chance.”

“A chance of what?”

“Something like peace, maybe.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Cycling triviliaties" is from a Jose Gonzalez song of the same name.


	36. 36.

They put Clarice Starling in the truck with the other agents. Price sat in front of her and eyed her with sudden mistrust and curiosity. She was asked to describe what Ardell looked like, how tall he was, how strong they could expect him to be and in what mental state they were likely to find him. They gave her a gun and watched her inspect it routinely and load it. She knew where the lock was, she reminded them.

Zeller asked her how much information Ardell Mapp could have been in contact with.

“Jack gave me the file he had on the extended Chesapeake Ripper profile.”

“Original files?”

“Yes.” She felt numb. “Ardell saw all of them. They’re at the apartment too.”

Zeller checked his own gun and attached the thick straps that secured the bulletproof vest to his chest. “Don’t put this on Jack.”

Clarice hoped Ardell would come with them quietly. Or maybe she didn’t. “I’m not,” she said.

 

* * *

 

Miriam Lass had changed in subtle ways. Some of it seemed to be recent, but some could be older. Alana sat down opposite her, at the table where the younger woman had had breakfast. Her coffee cup cooled before her in the windowless green kitchen. “Did Dr. Du Maurier give you anything?”

“Drugs, you mean?” Alana nodded. “Maybe I wouldn’t remember if she had.”

“You could remember what surrounded it. Have you lost consciousness or woken up with-...”

“No memory of falling asleep?” Miriam smiled, a bit bitter. “No. I’ve had so much of that, it feels like it’s most of my life. I’d remember.”

Alana considered her own cup, empty, between her hands. By this evening, they would leave. She had asked Margot to send them an armed escort. They would then go to the stables of Muskrat farm.

She remembered just the one: the riding arena that Margot used, from which Mason had ripped the stales and seats, then dug into the leveled earth ground to fill it with a concrete floor. He had built several rooms, all of them sterile, all of them equipped with surgical equipment and the related outlets. He had insisted on taking Alana for a visit of those early on, when he still believed her to be his partner in crime. There was no reason for so many rooms, really, since this place had been created for Hannibal and Hannibal only. But maybe Mason found courage in the perspective of multiplying hurt, or perhaps it was to rob Margot of this one place she had liked.

“She told you about the plan?”

Miriam nodded, unreadable. “You don’t agree,” she said.

Alana huffed. “It’s not the first time I and others have devised schemes and plots to capture Hannibal Lecter. None of them worked.”

“And all of them ended in blood,” Miriam said. “Now we start with it.”

Alana’s braid has loosened over night and now some hair split from it. She looked at them on her shoulder. “Walk me through it. Based on what Bedelia explained to you.”

Miriam turned to Alana. Her lip twitched briefly. There were so many shadows dwelling in her eyes, it was impossible to tell if she lied. There was no ground underneath her mind that could serve as truth. “We amputate Dr. Du Maurier’s left leg below the hip joint, as Hannibal Lecter has threatened her he would do. We inject her with a cocktail of the same drugs that were found in her blood in Florence and get her back in her Baltimore house. There, we set up Lecter’s dinner table with a mock meal made out of Dr. Du Maurier’s leg. We call Freddie Lounds. She publicizes the news.”

“Then he comes?”

Miriam nodded. “For us.”

 

* * *

 

_“Do you believe a veterinarian would be able to perform an amputation on a human being?”_

_The sound of her own voice surprised Alana. It rang loud and clear in her small, isolated room and it was laughing. When it stopped, she breathed again. “Were you insane from the beginning?” she asked. “Or just after Florence?”_

_Bedelia had listened to her with her head tilted and her eyes away. “During my stay in Italy with him, I became certain that he would kill and consume me,” she said. “I had never felt that before.”  
_

_Seriousness returned to Alana, but the walls around her seemed more unreal for it. “You don’t trap Hannibal Lecter,” she said._

_“I would underline the nuance between baiting him and making him curious.”_

_Alana got up and walked to the other bedside table, where she had set a bottle of whisky. She refilled her glass. “Hannibal won’t see the nuances in the pretense, he’ll just see the trap.”_

_Bedelia’s glass was almost untouched, on the coffee table beside the armchair in which she had yet to sit. She took it back and paced the small room, slowly. “You misunderstand the way curiosity acts on his mind.”_

_“I've spent three years in a 30-foot radius of Hannibal Lecter,” she said. “His mind isn’t a mind, it’s a weapon.”_

_“A weapon can be turned against itself.” Bedelia took a sip as Alana sat back down. “Curiosity is an elevated feeling for Hannibal. It respects both emotions and intelligence and draws without giving into the crude metaphor of hunting.”_

_“Hannibal likes to hunt and prey upon.”_

_“He prefers for his curiosity to be titillated,” Bedelia said. She accented the verb slightly, as her finger ran on the rim of her glass._

_Her eyes never leaving Bedelia’s legs. They seemed thin under the silk tights. The left one caught Alana’s gaze and kept it. She was beginning to feel haunted.“Then we kill him?”_

 

* * *

 

“How do you think Dr. Du Maurier benefits from that?” Alana asked Miriam.

Miriam raised her eyebrows. “The satisfaction of controlling her own fate. The knowledge she can escape him by using what he threatened her with. The safety, after he’s dead.”

“If he dies.”

Alana’s eyes went to Miriam’s missing arm. She hadn’t brought her prosthetic with her. The end, cut neatly above the elbow, came out from her t-shirt sleeve. It had healed well and Hannibal was an excellent surgeon. There was no trace of anything missing in her. It was as if she had been born like this. Miriam’s right hand went to cover the naked extremity. “Why did you say yes?” she asked Alana.

Alana wished she didn’t feel imprisoned. Maybe she had spent too much time at the head of the BSHCI. Now, there were only two ways of living, jailing or jailed. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Like the world was just one road and it was either be swallowed. Or swallow.”

 

* * *

 

When Ardell didn’t answer the door, they used Clarice’s key to open it. They still shoved it aside and into the wall as they burst in.

Before she even entered, Clarice understood, through the shouting and the orders, that he was nowhere to be found. She put the gun back in its holster on her hip and followed inside. The team inspected every room, examining the closets, the windows and the beds. In her room, they found the box of case files, called it recovered evidence and brought it out sharply and into one of the vans outside.

They left everything in disarray. By the door, her running shoes had been trampled.

Zeller and Price were in Ardell' bedroom, calling the Engineering unit to look at the computer. Their first thought was that it could be booby trapped. She took off her coat and went to sit in the kitchen, as the realization slowly hit her that she couldn’t stay here. They were already trying to pull fingerprints from the door, the corridor, going through Ardell’s drawers.

Price joined her in the kitchen. “Don’t ask me where he is,” Clarice said. “ I don’t know.”

“He should be home?”

She nodded. “He hardly gets out. This isn’t like him.”

Price had his hands crossed before him. “What’s like him then?”

Clarice was going to lean on the chair’s back. She stopped herself in due time. There was no need to start leaving prints now. This wasn’t her home anymore. It was a crime scene. “I’ve known him so long it’s strange to describe him.” She licked her lips and found that she could focus more easily than she thought. “There’s an intensity to him, even though he’s always very casual about everything. He’s dedicated, stubborn, single-minded. He likes a quiet life.” It struck her to find the right word. “He’s like a ornithologist. He watches, he collects, he learns. He likes that.” 

Zeller had come into the kitchen. In the corridor, people milled and buzzed. Forensic staff had started to put tape on the walls and doors, guided with black lights, dividing areas into squares to map the findings. “Well, turns out whatever bird he was looking at, it got his attention enough to make him leave.” He looked at Clarice. “We need an APB on him,” he said. “And we’re done here. No bodies, no pictures of bodies, no nothing.”

“Sad, sad life,” Price agreed.

They left Clarice alone as more people slowly filled the kitchen. Her mind raced with the thoughts of what she could have missed. Her phone had found its way into her hand. She didn’t remember taking it. She was barely conscious, it seemed, when she found the number of the Central Justice Information Services in the database. She asked for the APB herself.

When she was done, she was relieved the ground was finally gone from under her feet. She had long since had the impression to fall. At least now, she felt the wind of fear in her face and the clutching of threat at her throat.

 

* * *

 

_Only once did Molly come to Wolf Trap. Will had already started to pack his things into boxes. But they were not to move with him, just to be put away. He had yet to make the arrangements. And maybe it would be better to leave them here. This small house in the misty fields would become another virtual space, half of it in his mind, half of it sinking down and rotting into the land’s shining mud._

_“You’re bringing nothing?” Molly asked him._

_Will shook his head, gave a small smile and felt safer, for a moment. “Bad memories.” The makeshift bed was folded up now, threadbare and gray. “Bad everything.”_

_Molly eyed the wall with the fishing rods standing in their racks. “Not even those?”_

_Will remembered Abigail’s hands on the rod that was farthest on the left. Some days, he didn’t know if he had indeed taken her fishing or not. “Maybe those,” he said.  
_

_Winston stood behind her and Molly peeked at him over her shoulder. When he had met her, Will thought that she was the best of himself. That part, if it had ever been there, had left his mind. There were legends that said he should wander the world to find it. Instead, it had found him. And all of this, he thought in Hannibal’s voice._

 

* * *

 

Will read the news, relayed from Tattlecrime, that FBI files had been released on the Hannibal Lecter fan club. It was followed shortly by the official report of the death of Byron Metcalfe. The newsfeed mentioned beheading and removal of organs. Then it moved on to speak of Hannibal Lecter as somehow involved in the case. The article tied this to allegations that the BAU was to be dismantled or, as per other sources, already put under protective administration of the OIG.

He found Hannibal in the vast study. The two chairs were still as they had placed them, facing the windows. Hannibal had started removing the fine paper sheets placed on the shelves to keep them from the dust. 

“Lounds calls him Cake Monster.”

The other man’s mouth twitched into a lukewarm grin. “The FBI’s current lack of organization gives him an advantage.”

Will circled the room, until he reached the windows. He drew the curtains open wider and a thick nest of dust flew upward. “You commonly enjoy the idea of having an attendance of restless admirers.” It caught a ray of light and became scintillating powder before it landed on Will. “It reminds you that this is still a spectacle.”

Folding one of the sheets carefully, Hannibal let his face change and move from attentive to pensive, with something hard underneath. “I find myself less and less attuned to what I can want to enjoy.”

Will turned. “Joy is a component of you. It’s pushed out of sight or displayed, but it’s never out of use.”

“Preferences can fade in the face of need.”

The dust had settled, but the glass in the windows kept a shade. It was difficult to see through. All Will could see was the bright white of the snow and the dull shapes above, growing into the night. “We’ll need to kill him.”

“He may not want to kill me,” Hannibal said. “He’s not a predator. He’s inquisitorial.”

“He ripped your lawyer apart.”

Hannibal came to Will’s side by the window. His finger touched the glass and he dragged it across the pane. It created a path of crystal in the dim dust. “If Mr. Rubin wants to live in the festering ruins of my life, he can.” Gathering his shirt cuff into his hand, he cleaned the window pane. And they could see outside. There was some light through the trees and hints of a blue sky.

When Will started retreating for the door, Hannibal said, “I’ll drive you.”

“I wouldn’t feel safe less doing this less than a hundred miles away.” Will exhaled, touched a hand to a shelf. It was meant to hold books and was still empty. “Strange to think of safety. As if this was a home.”

“It has walls, a roof, a bed. A succinct taste of intimacy in the shared details of life.”

“I can’t think of intimacy with you. Either because I can’t tell you from me and thus cannot want to draw you inside, or because your touches have cushioned me with pain that blinds me.”

The one clean window pane had made all the others look dirtier than they were. Hannibal stared at them with cold distaste. He brushed the dust from his cuff. “Then we should leave right away.”

 

* * *

 

They had moved into their home two years after their wedding. When she had seen the glasshouse at the back, the creaking windows, the floors used and gray, one dead fly at the bottom of a window, Bella had decided to turn it into a greenhouse. “Lots of sun in there. Plants like sun.”

“I like sun,” Jack had said, hugging her back against his chest, hands on her stomach, digging in her clothing.

He still felt the soft crudeness of the cotton on the pad of his thumb. This too threatened to disappear.

He kept the greenhouse empty now, open to the morning light. At dawn, it beamed with red and clusters of gold. Tomorrow, he would watch the day come up here.

Clarice Starling rang his doorbell after dinner. She found him in gray slacks and the dark sweater he wore for their last run on the Virginia track. He hoped she would run there again.

She still had the clothes she wore now that she had his job, a slim suit, not properly fitted. It made her look stronger. He stood in the doorway a moment, then stepped aside. They went to the kitchen. It was dark and there were small, eerie lights on the underside of the cabinets.

“What happened?” he asked her after she had drunk down a glass of water.

Clarice had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her eyes were on the black suit Jack had worn earlier that day. On its hanger on the hook on the wall, it seemed like its own man, standing on guard against the wall. “You resigned?” 

“Yes, Clarice.” Jack nodded gravely. “Yes, I did.”

The young woman placed her glass down on the counter. “Do you sometimes feel like the horizon gets closer to you? And at first, you think it’s a good thing, that you’re starting to get it, that it makes sense – and then you realize that that horizon will crush you.”

Jack smiled and couldn’t believe he would now say this lightly. “There is a certain lowness in what we do, coming from the wretched smell of possibilities lost and dead. It’s assumed we just live with it. Into it,” he said. “What happened?”

“Ardell Mapp is gone.”

“Attempt-to-locate gone?”

Clarice sighed and nodded. “And we have another body. Byron Metcalfe,” she said. “Decapitated into his Rhodes Island home.”

Jack listened to her. They moved from the kitchen to the living room. The house wasn’t familiar to Clarice, she had been here a few times, and left in the early mornings. Still, she recognized enough of the furniture to notice the slight changes. She wondered what Jack would change in his life now, but that worry fell among the waves her mind was making, like a drop of rain, ignored on the pavement.

“I don’t do this,” Clarice said, once she had gone through the details of the case. “Catch criminals. I don’t.”

“Of course you do. You learned it. All can be learned.” Jack was sitting on the heavy coffee table, Clarice was on the couch. “It’s getting to you.”

“It got Ardell.”

Jack leaned back. “How did you find the files?”

She shook her head. “He found them.”

“You think this new killer did it?”

A tiny smirk came to her face. It was sudden and it left, as quietly as it had crept. “The Cake Monster?” she said, disdain twisting with coldness in her voice. “Yes. But there is nowhere for Lecter to fit in this. Lecter’s a lot of things, but he’s not a player. There’s a seriousness to his work. This one is… esoteric, almost otherworldly.” 

Getting to his feet, Jack went to the end of the room. From the closet there, he took white linens and two pillows. There was a duvet stacked down on the lowest shelf. He returned to the couch and pushed the coffee table out of the way. “When we decided to return to friendship, I knew I would always hesitate between two things. To be protective of you or to push you too far, the way I would push myself.” He motioned for Clarice to get up and step away from the couch. “I think I’ve managed to avoid both.”

“You have.”

“But now there’s something I’d like to signal,” Jack said. He removed the two cushions from the couch and opened the bed it revealed. Its springs squeaked and Clarice thought she caught sight of a sparkle of fire, deep inside the mound of coiled metallic legs. “It was something like this that got to me.”

“You stopped understanding?”

“I saw it get to Will and did nothing,” he said. “It’s getting to you. You’re better than me, you shouldn’t let it take you.”

Jack had begun making the bed and Clarice had dropped down on the couch’s arm. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Your apartment is a crime scene. Get some sleep here. You can find a hotel room tomorrow.”

She felt like her body’s weight was concentrating in her head, anchoring her down and pulsating behind her forehead. She had begun to nod, and Jack was spreading the duvet on the bed, when the phone rang.

 

* * *

 

They crossed the state line of Ohio and followed unfrequented roads. Hannibal didn’t speak and focused on the road with an energy so narrow in its beam, Will could feel him walking the halls of his memory. He tried to see where Hannibal would go. But without reality as a context, Hannibal was hard to predict, floating like an idea that has lost its tethers and grown teeth.

It was a small industrial town. There were two plants on each side of it and house and shops in between. A sign near a fast-food restaurant told them there were under a thousands inhabitants. They couldn’t stay for very long. The car would be noticed in moments. It was supper time, people were inside, but their children would soon come out to play. They would see the Jaguar, with its discreet, sleek, fairly anonymous black but also with its evident make. 

The pay phone was at a gas station on the main street. Will opened the door with his left arm, his right still tucked in a sling at his side. “Jules Gouffé,” Hannibal said. It was the first words he had spoken since they had left the Susquehanna River house.

Will blinked. “What?”

“A French cook in the 19th century. He pioneered the idea that cooking, pastry especially, should be used as decorative art.”

“Did he, by chance, mimic human bodies?”

Hannibal gave a slight shrug, thumbs and eyebrows moving together. There was something titillated inside of him now, wilder than joy, something like glee. “No, but if the ingredients Ms. Lounds listed are exact, it is one of his recipes. A _gênoise_ not meant as a head, but as a replica of a Greek temple of Demeter.”

On Will’s right, there was nothing but a lone road with faded stripes of white and gravel on the side. He spoke into the wind. “Demeter was confined to hell for eating food that had grown there.”

Hannibal stared ahead at the horizon. A pickup truck passed them in clouds of dirt.

The gas station behind Will was an old thing, still offering self-service or car-service as options. At the phone, he keyed in Jack Crawford’s home number and waited.

Jack picked up. In the car, Hannibal was sitting with his hands serenely crossed on his lap. “It’s not Hannibal,” Will said.

There was silence on the other end, filled with the things heaped in Jack’s mind, some of them feelings, some of them thoughts. He was trying to decide which was which. “Hello, Will,” he said. “Where are you?”

“At a pay phone. There’s sky and grass. A road that stretches into the belly of the earth.”

Jack sighed. “I had to try.”

“You’ve always been fiercely loyal,” Will said. “Do you believe me if I say that I tried, too?”

“I believe you, Will.”

Will’s coat was open to make room for his slinged arm. He hadn’t noticed the wintery breeze in the warm car. “This new killer. Hannibal saw him. As a patient, twenty years ago,” he said.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“He came into his office with a head. Hannibal reported it to the police at the time. There’ll be traces of that.”

“Parts of bodies and traces of truth is all we have left, right?” Jack said. His voice reminded Will of the long silence they had shared before Jack had told him about Bella’s cancer. It was trapped and had no other resource than the obvious. “I’ll tell Starling to look into it. She got my job.”

Will frowned and held the cool receiver against his ear with his shoulder. “She didn’t seem to want it,” he said, before blowing his warm breath on his fingers.

“That’s why she’ll be good,” Jack said. At that point, his voice shifted and Will became certain he wasn’t alone. “How do you know she didn’t want it?”

“When I met her, she seemed… resisting and defying, altogether.”

“She is. And she’s doing something good out of it. Better than you.”

Jack’s voice was slower. Starling must have been with him, in the room. He wasn’t talking only to Will. “Your moral admonitions have never affected me, Jack. You think it’ll work now?”

“It affected you alright. It made you do the right thing.”

“Until it didn’t.” Will pursed his lips, feeling the gap open in his mind, between what Jack had wanted him to be and what he wanted to hear now.

“This killer. Does he want to talk to Hannibal?”

“I feel like everyone wants to talk to Hannibal.” 

Jack stopped there. There was a crack forming in him that Will could hear as clearly as the constant hum of the car, the noises of comers and goers at the gas pumps behind him. “Do you think Miriam Lass...?” Jack said.

“No,” Will said. “She needs something, Jack, but it’s not your attention.” He hung up.

 

* * *

 

When the phone call ended, Clarice sat down on the open bed. Jack looked at the phone in his palm, not surprised, nor disappointed.

“What is he doing?” Clarice said.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She took one of the pillows. She felt like she needed to grip something. “Have you ever done that? When Will Graham was concerned? Not knowing.”

Placing the phone down, Jack took the other pillow and slid it into its case. “Either I’ve never known, or I’ve always known,” he said. “Looking back, it seems better to say that I never knew well enough.”

They made the bed together in silence. They avoided touching, but their motions showed that they were familiar. Movements were expected and welcomed.

“Are you going to tell me what he told you?” Clarice asked, when it seemed that Jack was leaving the room.

“It’s about the case. I’ll tell you tomorrow. You’ll sleep better.”

Clarice shook her head. “Tell me now. It’s better if it sticks with me during the night.”

Jack’s eyes shifted. It became admiration, pride, then brief worry and resignation, then it all went away. He told her that Hannibal Lecter had possibly known the killer as a patient. That he had been threatened by him, that he had filed a report. There was bound to be a trace of that.

Falling asleep trying to picture the archives of the Baltimore police department, Clarice’s mind found itself running after Ardell. When she managed to reach him and stop him, he was holding a lamb. It was crying. Ardell tried to speak, but his voice and the lamb’s mixed and became a distorted peal of screaming, so loud she thought her ears were expending to hold all of it.

 

* * *

 

Memories kept shifting. They were in Hannibal’s dining-room, eating Randall Tier and sometimes Abigail was there with them. Sometimes, her knuckles were covered in blood and Will’s hands were clean. Hannibal looked at her proudly and Will wondered if this had happened and if, somehow, Hannibal’s mind had been funneled in his through the blade in his stomach.

They were just back in Pennsylvania, running on a road that led them into evening, with pines on each side and snow on every branch.

“My mind feels like an explosion.”

“The universe itself is slowly exploding. Entropy takes us apart, molecule by molecule.”

Will turned to Hannibal. They had stopped to stretch their legs a bit earlier. But the other man still looked tired, much like he had in prison. Will considered that this could never fade. That the walls would never open. It was good. “And in the course of our dissolution into atoms, yours and mine could mingle and bind.”

A slight smile came to Hannibal’s lips. He brought his eyes to Will for a moment, before returning them to the road, with its splashes of light. “Would you object to dissolution?”

Will’s smile was less sad than it felt inside. “I’m already far at sea,” he said. “I can’t find the door to my memories. They just keep coming in muddled flashes, like spiraling fireflies.”

On Hannibal’s face, something strange surfaced, fondness, worry and envy, altogether. “The mind works best ordered. Whenever you leave the world, what do you see?”

He used to know where to find these truths and, now, there were almost none when he reached for them. “Whenever I close my eyes, they stay closed in my mind. I feel pressure and tightness, battling inside and outside.”

“No stream? No house on the sea?”

“We left your house on the sea,” Will said.

The headlights started to detach against the road as the night enveloped them. Hannibal’s mouth twitched and he gave a tilt of his head. “Then you need to find somewhere I would never go.”

“You’re everywhere into my life, into my mind.” Hannibal had been everywhere, through the usual interposition of blades and bullets.

The car slowed down at a crossing. It was darker now. The snow seemed to hold back some of the daylight, waiting to project it at the sky. There was a buzzing of color in the trees nearby as they grayed. “Then use mine,” Hannibal said. “My mind, my life, my body.”

 


	37. 37.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Lightest Way's [chapter 8](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5127935/chapters/12156725) happens during this chapter.

* * *

 

_Sinking in_ _(v.)_ : When the dry paint becomes dull and creates the impression of an inconsistent surface, either because it contains too much solvent or because it rests on a canvas that absorbs unevenly.

 

* * *

 

Will’s arm felt better that morning. The numbness was gone and the limb felt lighter by his side. The blood wasn’t pounding in the flesh anymore. The skin of his cheek had begun to itch again and Will felt like he could finally dislodge himself from the face of the cliff and fall freely.

Every morning, he tried to bring Robertas Lecter’s face before his eyes. The changes as he had started to squeeze the neck. The expression moving from surprised to hopeful and, from there, receding into terror. Then, there was nothing else he could see. The fear was his horizon and he sought it out. He pulled his fingers tighter and the face disappeared gradually.

He found Chiyoh downstairs. In the past few days, packages and parcels had arrived daily, sometimes more than once, sometimes through private delivery. She was unpacking the newly receptioned box. The peeled cardboard revealed a wooden case, unvarnished but finely polished. It had an ashen gray, as if it was made of sodden wood, carried by the sea.

Inside the case, in velvet settings, there were kitchen knives. They were different from the ones Hannibal had owned in Baltimore. The handle was not prolonged steel, but solid wood, smooth, oiled and burgundy, with three pegs on its side. There were eight of them in a first box and four smaller ones in another one that Chiyoh took from another shipment.

Will took one of them. The blade was short. Its tip was round and the fit was strange into his palm. “It’s for skinning,” Chiyoh said. “Hold it like this.” She showed him how to place the knife’s wood handle in his open palm, like he would do if he held it to stab someone.

“None of this surprises you.” He tested the knife’s blade on his fingertip. It didn’t pierce the skin, but slid along it to detach a thin layer, like a paper cut. It burned and eventually blood welled up. “But you haven’t shared his life in a long time.”

“You never shared his life. You’re not surprised,” she answered.

Will set the knife back in its casing. The others in the small case were also short blades. He recognized hunting knives in two of them. “A life is only the projected drawings of someone’s soul around them. To express and to shield.”

“Where is your life now? Is it here?”

Will huffed. “I don’t think my life can be a place anymore. It’s just a task.”

Chiyoh closed the small case and opened the bigger one to inspect it. There were eight more knives inside, their blades long with a large base. “When your life is just a task, it becomes suffocating.”

“Not if that task concerns me too,” he said. “You don’t think I can do it.”

She closed the knife case. “You don’t understand the life you’ve chosen. It’s not as much keeping him in as keeping everything else out.” She moved to the other side of the table. Will looked out for her eyes. He knew that, behind them, the prisoner of Lecter castle struggled, while the life drained from his face. “You’ll kill them all? All those who come to bring him back into the world?”

The skinning knife, he had held exactly like he had done the blade cutting into Dolarhyde’s stomach. Now that the memory didn’t strangle him with its blood and beauty, he could think back and wonder if Abigail had ever held a knife like this, and to cut into what, animal or human? “I’ll try not to.”

“If you try and kill me, I’ll fight you,” Chiyoh warned him. “Not like Uncle.”

Will smiled, as much as his cheek allowed. Chiyoh set the two knife cases on the counter. “I won’t kill you.”

She returned to the table and began crushing the delicate paper wrapping in balls. “What makes you believe I couldn’t do the same as you plan to do?”

“You kept someone caged for him for years. You were as decaying inside as the Lecter estate was. And you would do the same now? Cage him for me?”

She shook her head. “Not in the same way I kept that man.”

“It’s not going to work. You’ll make him kill you.”

“He doesn’t want to.”

Chiyoh’s eyes faded from black to blue and almost gray, like Abigail’s. “He doesn’t always want to kill those he kills,” Will said, voice wavering. “It doesn’t stop him.”

Abigail slowly faded and Chiyoh returned. She moved stiffly in the room. Hannibal had folded the new, white cloths in careful squares. She placed them in the drawers. “I found you a boat. It’s in the bay by the river.”

Will frowned. “Show me.”

 

* * *

 

_Will hung the dish towel neatly on the oven’s door’s handle. Sunlight was coming down and the room was still clear even though shapes would start melting into each other soon. Dusk was a particular moment when one could not tell whether it was dark or not. If he stayed here, in this one room, he would see things clearly, but if he walked out to go to the living room then came back in, he would find the kitchen darkened and the furniture indistinct._

_Sounds came from the corridor: Walter was settled in the living room, lying on his stomach on the ground, clutching a pillow, playing video games. Molly walked into the kitchen and pulled the bourbon bottle from the top shelf of a cupboard. She took two glasses. “You want a drink?”_

_He smiled. “Sure.”_

_They sat outside. It would be cold once the night would take hold, but most of the day’s heat still lingered._

_“Can we talk about what you don’t want to talk about?”_

_He exhaled. She would always candidly shoot for the heart and be polite about it. “There’s a reason I don’t want to talk about it.” He poured them glasses._

_The setting sun’s light shot above their heads and hit the wall behind them, so that they both sat in dark and quiet. “Something happened,” she said, not looking at him._

_“What?”_

_“Walter asked me what is a ‘murder husband’, today,” she said. “And why did the papers say that about you.”_

_It was at precisely this moment that he knew that he floated and that nothing held him down. “Do you believe me, when I say that I do everything I can to shield you two from this?”_

_She sipped from her glass and cradled it between her hands. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”_

_“No.” He had committed himself not to read the papers. But he supposed she believed he still would have, at some point._

_“The article actually said that you refused to comment.”_

_“Freddie Lounds is the author of that article.”_

_“Yes, I think that’s the name. Familiar?” Molly asked._

_“Unfortunately.” Will’s glass was empty. Every neurone in his brain invoked the regret of not having killed Freddie Lounds, while simultaneously averting the reality of the thought. It was okay to think of killing someone, as long as you warded off the ideas of a pulse coming to a stop, of you waiting for the heart to seek a beat again, and it not coming, and the estranged sentiment of a completely motionless body._

_“So, I’m gonna talk. You don’t have to say anything.” She placed her empty drink on the table. “You were some kind of covert op agent, trying to catch this killer. You got busted, he almost killed you.” At his side in the stream, Abigail’s smiled a greeting, dried blood on her neck and face. “He ran to Europe, you got there to catch him and you did.”_

_“I did,” Will said._

_Molly waited for a while, many things passed in her head, on her face, that she did not say. “When Donald got sick, everyone was devastated. Everyone was there to support me, come to the hospital, stay with Wally when things got rough and I had to sleep there. It did grow long eventually, so they kind of left at some point. And then he just died and everyone came back around me, and told me that they knew how I felt. How sad I was.” She looked far away. “No one ever knew that I was glad that he was dead. I just cried at how horrible I felt. He was so angry at the end I wished he would just die faster. Whenever I got home, I sat in the living room, by the phone. And I didn’t sleep, and mom thought I couldn’t sleep. But I wanted to be awake, to make sure I could be on the phone when they told me he had died. But I had to be there when it happened. He made me watch it and he enjoyed it.” She paused, and took a deep breath. “You know, people get sort of nasty, when they get real sick,” she said, giving a short, humorless chuckle._

_“I’m sorry you had to tell me that. I sort of knew,” Will said._

_She shook her head, meaning for him not to apologize. “I know things can get fucked up. I just thought you should know that I know,” she said._

_Will could barely see Molly’s features now. “You should tell Walter that it’s okay to ask me about it,” he said, pouring more bourbon. “I mean, I’m going to lie, but he should feel he can ask. It’s important.”  
_

_“Are you gonna lie to me?”_

_Will made sure to look into her eyes. “It’s not about the truth. It’s about how harmful it can be. And it’s not important enough that the harm’s worth it.” He got up and fetched a lamp in the kitchen. Their two chairs, the table, the glass, the bottle, all gleamed..  
_

_Molly finally sighed. “I feel like I drank a bit too fast,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll have a coffee. You want one?”_

_He nodded, silently, grateful for the change of topic._

_They drank their coffees wordlessly and the night seemed longer and more diffuse. Will felt a strange impulse to let it all go and to tell Molly everything he had ever said to Hannibal. But every time he was about to speak, he turned and looked at her drifting off beside him in the glow and he knew that it would be too much for anyone to bear. What was there to say? We talked about death, most of the time, about how much we felt at home near it, about how simple it is to escape the mundanities, about the hypocrisy of the fair feelings, about the crumbling limits of morality, about not being afraid to die, about love so powerful you wish the entire world would perish in flames just for glimpsing it._

_Molly got up, gathered her cup and kissed his brow once. He leaned into it, and she kissed him again, then she said, “I’ll try and get Walter into bed. Then I’ll be turning in too.”_

_“Sure.” He caught her hand and held it close, against his throat. “What are we doing tomorrow morning?”_

_She smiled, not a hint of sadness, and only a pinch of awareness in her face. She gestured to the bottle. “You want to drink more of this, right?”_

_“I might,” he said softly._

_She touched her cheek to the top of his head. “Stop at three more,” she advised._

_Molly opened the door to the house. She tilted her head on the side, blonde air flowing over her shoulder, and motioned for Winston to get back inside the house, tapping her thigh with her hand. “I’ll talk with Wally tomorrow. About him asking you…”_

_Will nodded, somehow soothed. “I’ll have something ready.”_

_Molly had gone to bed._

_It did not take long for things to become blurry around him. The woods were a dense black. He sipped from his glass, sure there were creatures hidden in the forest, waiting to start hunting. As he drank, the alcohol nourished him, the heat turning to strength and numbness at the same time. His thoughts grasped again at the illusion that he would have killed Hannibal, given the chance. Somewhere beyond the tree line, there was a ruffling noise, one from a bird, or a dragon, puffs of air and snorts. The beast flapping its wings._

_After refilling his glass for the second time, Will got to his feet and went down the steps. He was aware he was dreaming before he reached the first trees. Digging holes in the snow, his steps brought him farther and farther from the house. His shoes filled with flakes that melted into water. The more he walked, the more his humid socks chafed his skin, frozen into blankness._

_He was searching for the dead animal he had heard trying to fly away. If it managed to take off, it would head straight for home and Molly and Walter. There was no weapon in sight. He would have to trust his hands._

_If only, he was not burdened with something. Something so heavy, it made it difficult to drag his legs forward._

_Behind him, a faint hissing sound, like the one a snake would make. He turned around. There was no snake._

_From where he was, the house was in plain sight, revealed by a breach in the trees. The lights were all on inside, it shimmered like a jewel in its case of night. Very slowly, with a building, fragmented roar, the walls detached from the roof. At first, they seemed sucked in. Then they were gone and the light had been replaced by fire, orange, swelling into a ball._

Around him, the night was gone entirely. The light had eaten it. He would never again feel safe, not with the beast weighing him down. The small fishing and hunting shop had burst into flames on the beach. Some of the sand must have turned to glass and left shards and ashes.

 

* * *

 

They were in a basement level. There was no night and no day in Quantico’s protective custody.

Alana couldn’t guard her thoughts: they brought her to burial and frozen earth. Since she had discovered what Hannibal Lecter was, the ideas of death had changed in her. It used to be abstract and violent. Something cold, somewhat unattainable. Always, in her fantasy, it would come by surprise. Now, she knew she would feel it and she knew there would be pain. She could already feel the suffering seeping out, just to pour into Hannibal’s enjoyment and pleasure. It was a strange thing to imagine: Hannibal delighting in something, authentically. On some days, she was almost eager to get there.

Bedelia Du Maurier stepped in beside her. They stood in the corridor and watched Miriam Lass sleep through the window in the door to her room. “You don’t know Will Graham like I do,” Alana said.

“Will and I knew each other through Hannibal’s influence,” Bedelia said. “As far as my knowledge of him pertains to Hannibal, I may be as well-informed as you.”

Alana crossed her arms against her chest. She held her coat draped over them. “I haven’t knwon Will to save someone. Not since Abigail Hobbs.”

“Yet, he will.” The older woman’s head pivoted. Her hat had flattened the curls of her hair. Her elegance was ruins and all the more powerful for it. “His impulse to save is stronger than his impulse to kill.”

“But Will can kill.”

Bedelia nodded. “You’ve known that for some time.” In the room, Miriam slept quietly, preserved, like a secret. “Even if you could want to deny it now.”

“I don’t,” Alana said, her voice more hushed than she would have wished.

Bedelia turned away from the door. The light coming from the bedside lamp in Miriam’s room projected the door’s window’s checkered wire mesh in shades on her face. “Placed before a choice, Will Graham will save you rather than watch you die,” she said.

“Watching someone die is something else entirely,” Alana said. And _below her feet, Mason Verger’s face sunk in the eel pool. It was in the unnatural curve of his arms above his head that they had known for sure that he was dead. Otherwise he could have floated back up, bloated, the fish hanging from his mouth_.

“And if the only way to stop you from being killed is to kill Hannibal, he will.”

Alana stepped back. Together, she and Bedelia walked toward their quarters. They had to leave now. Kade Prurnell had warned them she could no longer have them here, even if Alana Bloom used to consult for them. Even if Nour Ayesh’s story couldn’t be disproved.

“And Hannibal would just let him do?”

Bedelia smiled. “All of us want to succumb to things denser and darker.”

They passer Nour’s room. She wasn’t asleep for what they could see. She was sitting, propped against the bedframe. Her eyes stared ahead at her prison.

 

* * *

 

_When she walked in, Hannibal didn’t stand up. His empty cell hadn’t made him weaker. He looked more savage, without civilization and its required niceties, bare. From where he sat on the ground, cross-legged, he stared up at the night through the skylight. “Have you by chance met Will’s wife?”_

_Pacing to give herself a moment to ponder who Hannibal was threatening, Alana found no comfort in the dark wooden walls and the ancient room. “Is it the idea of Will’s happiness in itself that bothers you, Hannibal? Or mine?”_

_“Will is not happy.” Hannibal’s head tilted down. When removing the books, pencils, toilet and cot, she had also ordered the cell lights to interrupt their daily cycle. Now, no matter the time of day, they glared down, harsh and pale. Hannibal’s cheeks seemed hollow in it. “He’s decent. He’s… covered.” He seemed to muse. “He’s fortified.”_

_“I’m happy.”_

_“You would be happier if I was dead.” He narrowed his eyes, meddling. “Would you have come to watch the lethal injection?”_

_She breathed out. Inside, her thoughts stopped weaving into the fabric of her memory and jerked up. Somehow, she had thought he would be slaughtered, his blood drained out of him, like a pig, hanging upside down. “Yes.”_

_Hannibal smiled and leaned back into the wall of his cell. He drew his knees against his chest, as if he mimicked holding someone close who couldn’t be here. “Will would have too. You’re not entirely dissimilar.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal changed his [Chroma Porsche knives](http://www.chroma-cutlery.com/type301) from Baltimore into [Sabatier knives](http://www.sabatier-shop.com/kitchen-knives_46_.html). According to the internet, it's a life altering event in a knife-handler's existence to go from japanese blades to traditional european ones.


	38. 38.

The lights were out when Price came in. He tilted the switch. Under the white plastic plates, the cathodes sent silent crackles of electric current through the neon in the tubes and, plate after plate, a soft luminescence glowed that filled the gray lab. At the point farthest from the entrance, one light flickered nervously in and out. Price walked to it and looked up, waiting for it to settle down. Zeller’s voice came from the door.

“Do you think we should list that? Dear Inspector General, in the dismantling of this office, please note that a light’s about to burn out near the last morgue drawers.”

“We’re only taking care of the…” Price reached in his bag and got out an official paper in a brown file. It was FBI letter paper, but it had the OIG’s stamp at the bottom. He read from the list in bold characters, “Products of, tools used in and all other objects related to the department’s or office’s work, field-work and other activities.”

Zeller huffed, nodding. This wasn’t their first transfer or reassignment. They had both had their shares of contracts as medical examiners throughout the country. He had expected that the OIG had people of its own to do this kind of stuff. It felt like being kicked out of one’s own house and having to list your goods yourself so they could be sold. “What about the current case?”

Starling had walked in quietly. She had a large bag by her side. “We are still on it until the end of the month, then we turn it over to Homicides,” she said. Zeller supposed her bag held some of her clothes and things. Her hair was just freshly washed. She smelled of coffee and cheap bran muffins cooling in the large white place of a lobby breakfast in a motel. Or maybe she looked like she smelled like them. “Homicides will probably not want it for a while, file an appeal to the Senate to get the OIG to reinstate us. It’s not going to work, there’s going to be some fussing for a while. But we’ll all be gone at this point.”

Price shrugged. “Maybe you’ll work for Homicides.”

Clarice opened her bag, smiling. “I doubt it,” she said. “I’ve shown reluctance instead of enthusiasm, reticence instead of sheer compliance. By the looks of it, I don’t want to be here.”

“Do you want to be here?”

She got a thick file out of the bag and brought it to the table near the glass wall. There were pictures inside. “It’s not not what I expected. It’s just not how I expected to do it.”

Zeller was arranging a stepladder to reach the highest drawer. It wasn’t for bodies, but usually used to store parts. “What do you want, Starling?”

She searched for pictures in her files, putting them to the side in a pile when she found them. “To make sure Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are not responsible for the latest crimes, directly or indirectly.”

Price snorted. “You think they’re alive too,” he said, softly.

Clarice should have lied, but the twisting of truth turned into a knot. It couldn’t get past the tightness in her throat and she swallowed it back down. It fell in her chest where the failed hopes and dreams were. “I saw Will Graham,” she said. Zeller had his arm deep into the drawer, trying to reach something. He twisted his head around. Price’s eyes widened then narrowed. “I saw him at the Chandel Square house.”

“That property’s under seal,” Price said.

“I know,” Clarice said. She took tape from the table and went to the white board. There were five pictures. “The seal’s broken. No one’s looked into it since the trial’s over.”

Zeller climbed down from the ladder. He was holding something between his fingertips, carefully, like it was dirty. “How was he?”

Searching to do that, Clarice found that it was hard to coalesce her feelings into an impression. “He was injured. He told me to go to the Marlows’ house. That’s when we found the arm.” She began to place the pictures up on the board. “He looked in pain.”

Price and Zeller exchanged looks. The first ran a hand over his face. The second didn’t seem to know what to do with what he held. He ended up placing it down on the table, next to Clarice’s file. It was a human toe, putrefied in the cold of the refrigerator and forgotten there, crisp and dry.

“Should we clean the place, or will they do that?” Price said, after a moment, gaze attached to the toe.

In the silence, the only noise was the one of Clarice taping the pictures into place.

Zeller threw the toe in a trash can. “They can as well do it themselves.”

Price gestured aimlessly. “We should identify that toe,” he protested. “It’s someone.”

In the corner, Zeller sighed. “What are the pictures for?” he asked Clarice.

The images were close-ups of the elements of the case. The first two were older. The paper seemed thicker and curled at the edge. A corner of the second of them had yellowed and cracked. There were the first two unidentified bodies, from 1998 and 2000. The two pictures were the same that had been posted on Mapp’s website. Next came the doll arm, small and pink. Its plastic surface had caught the light from the camera and reflected it in a bright isotoxal star. Then was Cake Monster’s head, the softness smashed open with the three organ pieces outside on a slate. And finally, there was Metcalfe’s body. The picture was taken so that the neck and its fine sutures were exposed on the foreground. The rest of the body was behind it, foggy. The liquid Clarice had collected was sliding down the wound, frozen in mid-motion. “There’s something Ardell saw. I need to see it too.”

Zeller arched an eyebrow. His mind was still fixed on Graham, troubled in the distance. “You don’t have epiphanies,” he said. “That’s good. Welcome to the mortal world.”

 

* * *

 

Chiyoh was sharpening the Sabatiers’ blades. Most of them were honed enough for common kitchen use, but the blades of the four hunting knives especially were somewhat weak. Hannibal had handled them many times only to feel the weight of the object in his palm. He found that he hadn’t missed images as much as he had other sensations, tastes and smells, but also subtler things, that could not be subsumed in a broad name. The weight of common clothes on his shoulders, different every time he put them on, the depth of his steps in the sand and the twist in his ankle as he tried to regain it, the speed needed for his eyes to burn and water if he kept them open unblinkingly in the wintery wind.

She had returned from the river early in the morning. “He changed his mind. He took the keys,” she said. “For the boat.”

Hannibal stopped minutely in removing the dust from a plate he had slipped out of its packaging. The stark smell of the bubble wrap would not leave his nose. “You persuaded him or did he do that himself?”

She seemed to hesitate. He had rarely seen her do this. As time passed, there was less of him, his past and his life in her and more of the outside world. There was something savage in the process, he thought, of having those dear and close slowly extracted from your soul until they were a separate person. “This is not permanent,” she said, her eyes moving to the white porcelain he held.

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But it’s a life and life cannot be lived without objects and persons.”

“He doesn’t want to live with you,” she said. She tested the knife’s blade: it slid through paper like it was weightless. “It has no shape in his mind exactly.”

Hannibal turned away to place the plates by the sink to wash them, arranging the pile to make its edges even. “Will’s mind is more currents and strengths than shapes and spaces.” He opened the cardboard package that had contained the cutlery and flattened it carefully. “Is he gone?”

“He was still there an hour ago.”

 

* * *

 

Out in the street, it had been surreal to walk, his hands deep in his pockets and Billy beside him. The other man had a jump to his step, some kind of enthusiasm or particular energy. Ardell felt out of phase, as if all around him was not in its right place, the colors outside of the lines, or the sounds dimmed down to a thumping blur in the distance.

They had reached Billy’s car. That was when he decided to run. He didn’t decide as we imagine decision to form: there was no evaluation, and no analysis. He would later reflect that he had been stunned in fear, too scared to run before, but that it was waiting inside of him. And when finally the fear diminished enough, it sprang within him, bypassing his brain and going directly to the muscles.

Billy’s jump was quick. In two quick strides, as if he had heard the acid coming and going in the tissue, before the neurons fired, before energy was even produced, before the thought appeared. His arm grasped the collar of Ardell’s shirt and he was yanked backward.

A needle waited for him. It touched the skin in his back with a vivid pain that spread to his chest. It must have broken too.

After that, everything slowed down as if the atoms were heavier. The car started and they left. Things weren’t moving, Ardell thought, they were dancing along calm steps.

“I thought you had a taser gun,” he mumbled.

Billy chuckled. “It usually works out better if I say that,” he said. “People find it scary or whatnot.” He turned from the road to look at Ardell. Ardell felt hot, but the car seemed cool, all in gray velvet seats and dark blue on the dash and seat belts. “Has it started yet?”

“What?”

“The hallucinations.”

Ardell frowned. In some depths of his mind, he thought that Billy was a dream, that the car was a chariot pursuing horses and flames.

Somewhere, after they left town, the trees began to turn and twist, as if they were smiling. The smiles deepened and widened. Soon after that the sky was swallowed, then the earth. Ardell screamed when the car ran straight into a gaping mouth and Billy was laughing too.

 

* * *

 

The small bay near the house could be accessed through the woods. There were still traces of a path between the trees, but no one had lived here in a long time and the bushes had grown into thicker, taller groups. They brushed Hannibal’s legs as he walked.

After a sudden clearing, he came to the beach, a mix of gray sand and rough pebbles. The wharf was still solid, small for the long sailboat. Both sails were down. Will’s hands were covered in grease. He had pulled out a large metal bolt from the gooseneck and screwed its nut back on. “Ever been on a boat?” Will asked him, wiping his fingers on his pants.

Will’s hand had left an almost perfect print of black on his thigh. It scintillated when he turned toward him. “Motor boats were a prized possession of the average surgeon in Baltimore,” Hannibal said.

“But you’ve never sailed.”

Hannibal arched an eyebrow. “Should I?”

Eyes attached to the horizon, beyond the opening of the creek, leading to the river and the sea, Will seemed to aim to possess the world just as he was ready to leave it. “If we had to leave this place quickly, you could need to.”

Near the mast, beside the hatch’s bump of bright wood, were boxes. Food, mostly, clothing and other things he couldn’t make out. “Where will your trip lead you?”

Will looked away. “Leaving tonight,” he said. He stepped closer to the wharf and held out his hand. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Grabbing Will’s hand, Hannibal tested its hold. Then he jumped smoothly on the boat’s deck, having only caught a glimpse of the black waters between the hull and the white fenders. Will’s fingers left marks of slippery grease on his wrist and thumb, its darkness not unlike the one of blood, deep inside the bowels of the body.

 

* * *

 

“No,” Nour said.

“I’m not trying to convince you,” Bedelia said.

Nour turned away. On the table before her, Gold was sitting at the bottom of his wheel, nose frantic. From the jumps in the fur, Nour could see the rapid heartbeat. “Of course, you are.”

The other woman paused for a moment. They had hardly spoken since Nour had met her yesterday. She didn’t seem to be the same as Dr. Bloom. All of them here, they were all worried, but there were different kinds of worry, some starker than others. “Even if I tried to convince you, I don’t see what arguments I could bring to your attention that you don’t already have before your eyes.”

She had been told that she wasn’t under arrest. She had been told not to contact the outside world, and she knew she couldn’t leave. Again, she found herself searching for a weapon, anything that she could use, except that this time, she didn’t know exactly who she should aim it at. Maybe she could just clutch it against her chest and hope, but even that thought felt like rust in her chest. “You’re right. You’re not trying to convince me,” she said. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”

“To what advantage would I do that?”

The hamster’s eyes were all black. Nour couldn’t tell exactly what he was looking at as his head was tilted back and up. “Yours seems a satisfying answer, even if I don’t see it right now.”

Dr. Du Maurier crossed her legs again and leaned into the side of her seat. Her gaze was down to the knuckles of her folded right hand in her lap. Nour finally turned around, waiting for her to speak. She was drawn to the left leg again, the one she had been asked if she could amputate. “Do you understand why he let you live?”

“No, I don’t.” She went to sit on the bed. It was a small room, but it allowed her to put some distance between herself and where Bedelia sat. “Do you?”

“You live because you are an object,” the older woman said. “An instrument, used to convey a message to Dr. Alana Bloom.”

Nour scoffed and dropped her arms between her legs. “So I should accept to be used by you?”

Bedelia tilted her chin down. “Hannibal Lecter kills people that have displeased or encumbered him. He had also killed people he loved. It is his way to relate to the world. He has sworn to kill me and Alana Bloom,” she said.

“He didn’t kill your other friend.” She hadn’t spoken to her yet, a woman younger than her, Lass, she thought, with something tough in her eyes.

A slow smile moved to Bedelia’s lips. Her eyes shone and it became apparent that she believed she had won. “Because he destroyed her mind, robbed her of life…” she said. “While you, Nour Ayesh, are an unfinished work.”

Nour didn’t shiver, didn’t tremble. Her muscles were slack, even though they hurt from the scarce sleep they had found on this old bed, in this soft prison. “Maybe I’d rather lose it.”

Bedelia blinked. “That can be arranged.”

“What?”

“Once this is over, I can make it so that you know very little anymore of yourself and the breathing world around you.”

It sank in Nour like a rock in a pond. It was silent and it quickly reached bottom, to rest in peace at the utmost depth of her mind. “You consent to it? The leg?”

“The fact that I do does not make this legal. You are a veterinarian doctor,” Bedelia said.

“Morally,” Nour rephrased. Her hands covered her face. Even the dim light seemed too much. She wished there were windows. “Morally, do you want this?” 

“Even if there is a palpitating cluster in our brain that is evolved enough to produce moral truths and desire them, this is not it.” Bedelia Du Maurier rose and placed her palm flat on her left thigh. “This is flesh.”

“Do you think about it?” Nour said. “Your flesh?”

Bedelia stopped smiling. “Day and night.”

Nour looked up. Bedelia had come closer and gazed down at her, something heavy in the calm on her face. “He wins. If you think you’re meat,” Nour said.

“No. Both us and him obtain one sparkling instant, during which he thinks he has.” Bedelia brought the hand that had rested on her thigh and brought it to her throat, where the blood beat in the carotid, where Hannibal’s hands had been, cupping her neck from behind. The hot water warming her skin. The softness of the soap. “Meat is life. Not the other way around.”

 


	39. 39.

When Ardell regained consciousness, Billy was already talking. From the tone of his voice, he told an engrossing story. For a while, Ardell didn’t pick up the words exactly. It wasn’t clear if Billy was talking to himself or if he expected to be heard. His face was animated, going from smiles to vivid expressions of surprise, as if he was telling a joke, or a funny tale.

But his body was calm. His gestures were even and precise. His hands strapped Ardell's right arm down with a kind of tie-wrap, only thicker and wider, in black plastic. It was tight, but a cushion had been placed between Ardell’s skin and the bond so as not to cut circulation.

“It was like I wasn’t wanting to leave. And on the one hand, you know, who’d want to leave this place. We have this idea that it’s warm and fuzzy and dreamy. So, on the other hand, when you think about the blood and shit and muscles nearby, holding you in and really not wanting to let you go, it’s a surprise we don’t just all kick our way out of there-…”

“I haven’t been following,” Ardell mumbled.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Billy said. He moved to the left arm and made sure the tie was tight. “I was just wanting to give your mind some background sound.” He looked up at Ardell. “Nightmare-mode still on?”

Ardell blinked. His hair felt wet and his body felt absent. A lot of it hurt, his legs especially. And there was a contraption around his neck and head that prevented him from moving. He couldn’t tell if the room was dark or not, there was light around them that enclosed them preciously. He presumed he was inside of something. “Are you part of the nightmare?”

Billy smiled. He sat back somewhat. “That’s a good one, Ardell, thank you.” A bright light was aimed in Ardell’s pupils and he squirted. “I’m the nightmare’s mother,” he said.

“What…” Ardell tried to move and found he couldn’t. He tried to move again, stronger this time and whatever he was seated into didn’t budge, not a millimeter. “What’s that?”

“It’s a chair,” Billy answered gracefully.

“Yes,” Ardell said. “Why am I in it?”

Billy gave him a broad smile, while he moved over and out of Ardell’s sight. Ardell heard glass bottles clanking. “You know what?” Billy said, from the darkness. “Let’s keep that a surprise. We’ll get into it soon enough.”

Ardell swallowed and found his throat like parchment. “Alright.” He recalled from behavioral studies that it was best to pursue conversation in order to form a relationship and gain trust. He wondered if it still applied if the kidnapper was the one to initiate the discussion. Fumbling in his mind for something to say, he found it came easily. “What were you talking about? When I woke up.”

Billy’s hands came back in sight. Ardell’s eyes struggled to follow them as they adjusted something near his neck. “My birth,” Billy said. Another bright smile in a face that seemed amiss above a rigid body. “Did you know I was born twice?”

“You never came off to me as a born again. So that’s surprising,” Ardell said.

Billy had a short, witty laugh, like they had been friends forever. Ardell tried to think how long they had chatted. Years, probably three. THO had appeared in the earliest times, before the trial even began. “Also good,” Billy said. “But I’m talking literal, like surgical rebirth.”

Ardell frowned. “You mean… they put you back in?”

“That would have been cooler, but no.” Billy sat back. It took Ardell a while to see that a catheter was installed near his clavicle, directly in the aorta in the chest. “My heartbeat was wrong, apparently, when it got around to seven months. My mother went to the hospital and they said I was about to die. They did a C-section and, when they opened up, my heartbeat was fine again. So they closed it up, set up my mom in the hospital and I was born almost two months later. Perfectly fine.”

“Actual rebirth,” Ardell said.

Nodding his approval, Billy tempered. “It didn’t go as well the second time. Do you know what a breach extraction is?”

Trying to shake his head, Ardell only managed to make Billy frown and check on what Ardell supposed were screws holding his head in an upright position.

“You can’t move,” Billy told him. “You have to talk.”

“No. I don’t know what a breach extraction is.”

There was something behind Ardell, above his head. Billy got up to examine it and see if it was okay. As the tubes that went into his arms shook, Ardell realized it must have been a transfusion apparatus. He had intravenous tubing in both arms. They were filled with burgundy liquid, but not open yet, as the small clasps were shut. “A total breach extraction, in fact,” Billy said. “It’s pretty disgusting. My butt was coming out first and that’s bad. So the doctor pushed me back inside, stuffed his arm in up to the elbow and took hold of my feet to pull me out.”

Rolling his eyes back as far as he could, Ardell could catch a glimpse, through the furry that must have been his eyebrows, of a lamp overhead and some distant gray beyond it that should be the ceiling. A room then. Most likely underground, if he trusted the humid air around him. “We’re born headfirst to make sure the first thing we do is breathe.”

Billy nodded. “I breathed fine. My mother screamed. I used to dream of that.” He sat back, hands on his knees, ready for something. “Speaking of which, are you ready for some more nightmare?”

Ardell recalled how thirsty he was. He supposed he was really scared and his mind shuffled that into the dehydration. “I’d rather not,” he said.

The needle was ready. Billy pulled a tray toward him. It was shining and glassy. “At some point, most people feel relatively okay with it.”

“Is this the part where you try and convince me this is good for me?”

The older man stopped in the process of rolling his sleeves up. His hands smelled of clean, something like bleach. “Is that what you think Hannibal Lecter does?”

“You’re not Hannibal Lecter,” Ardell said.

“Am indeed not.” The needle coupled noiselessly with the picc-line’s connector. Ardell didn’t feel the liquid going in. The sole thing he saw were Billy’s fingers pushing the plug. “And this is also not good for you. It’s good for me.”

“Then why do it to someone you like? Because we liked each other right?” Ardell felt desperate. It took him a few seconds, but he recognized the first effects. Those he had felt in the street, as he was slipped into the car. There was an anesthetic in there, as well a hallucinogenic agent.

“It’s more agreeable, broadly,” Billy reflected. “You’re more scared too. I wish I could be clearer.”

“Why can’t you?”

Billy placed the syringe down. A few drops fell from its tip. They seemed dirty on the clean metallic plating. “What happened when they gave Lecter sodium amytal in prison to try and get him to tell them where he had buried someone?”

Ardell felt his words slip away from him. He would have grasped, but his hands were tied. “He gave them a recipe,” he breathed.

“Of how he cooked the dude, yes.” Billy smiled and stopped. His seriousness was eerie, like a cloak. “What does that tell you?”

It must have been part of the nightmare that Ardell only wanted to shrug and could not. “We know that sodium amytal is crap since the nineties. It’s not a truth serum, it disinhibits. It can just as well disinhibit you to lie more freely.”

“In this context, we have to try something else.”

For certain now, Ardell knew that a shadow lurked behind Billy. Movement against the wall, fluttering like the one of a butterfly, too rapid for the eye to grasp. “As a truth serum?”

“Fear,” Billy answered. “Yes. Fear is good. Fear is healthy.” Billy’s eyes blinked a few times. He seemed tired. Rings dug deep in the skin of his cheeks. He turned to get up and leave. “I’ll leave you with your monsters. I have another head ready. Do you want to see it? It’s right there,” he offered.

Ardell had all his mind focused on the growing creature behind him. He wanted to ask Billy to stay, to make sure he shielded him from the creeping black. Instead, he nodded and turned his head away.

For a moment, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the severed head of Robertas Lecter stared at him, mouth gaping and empty. The lightlessness had caught up with him and was now hands and trying fingers nagging at his clothes and skin. He tried to scream, but he felt too heavy. But maybe he was crying, because Billy looked pleased. He removed the head, turned away and left, closing the light behind him.

 

* * *

 

After spending her day staring at the pictures on the white board and browsing the files while Price and Zeller listed and grouped the cases the BAU had worked on over the years, Clarice stopped by Jack’s office. It was technically hers, but she couldn’t bear to be here. It was everything that had happened. It was where Jack would never be anymore. It was where she wouldn’t be allowed to be for more than a few passing weeks. Yet she didn’t belong in the BAU’s offices either. Which weren’t the BAU’s anymore. There was no home for her here, only swaying rocks to jump on, trying to avoid the water underneath.

She placed her bag down. She still had two hours before her appointment at the offices of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, to consult the file related to the case reported by Hannibal Lecter years before. Sighing, she looked for her hotel for tonight. Her phone was the only light in the room. Jack had offered her a guest bed for longer if she wanted, but she had woken up this morning with the taste of a lamb’s blood in her mouth. In her dream, she had bought lamb from the butcher and, while she had put it to cook on the stove, instead of chemically transforming into food, it had returned to life, growing hair, teeth and eyes, its blood filling the pan and spilling out, splashes of it in her eyes, her mouth.

Steps approached past the glass dors. By the time Clarice looked up, Alana Bloom stood there.

The last time they had spoken had been three weeks ago, when Clarice was still working on her report. It had taken some time to get a hold of a number that worked to join the Bloom-Vergers in the Verger Canadian estate. When she finally did, Alana Bloom had told her she no knowledge of anything. She had accepted to turn in her planner so that her schedule could be confronted with Jack. Then Clarice had thanked her. On the phone, the former head of the BSHCI had seemed so detached, it was hard to tell if she lied.

Dr. Bloom had a coat on and a bag in hand, mirroring Clarice’s. It was obvious that the office was no longer used. The curtains were shut, the plants were gone. “Where’s Jack Crawford?” she asked.

“He resigned,” Clarice said. “Two days ago.”

As she walked in, Alana’s eyes went to the walls. There were faint traces, paler than the rest of the paint, on the wall, of the imprint of framed diplomas. “Because of the Dolarhyde screw-up. Because of your report.”

Clarice nodded. “He was suspended, initially. He’s still due for a disciplinary hearing in two weeks.”

Alana turned from the wall to her and her eyes seemed to scan into her head. “I remember you. Clarice Starling. You have guilt written all over you now.”

“In this situation, sorry and glad usually go hand in hand,” Clarice said.

Alana smiled. “What are you glad for? I’ve got only sorry.”

Clarice’s thought went back to the beach of rough sand, with Jack Crawford standing near the ocean. Far behind them, the remnants of the exploded store smoked and stunk. Jack’s coat caught some of the wind and swelled on his back, like a short cape. “I’m glad I didn’t lie for Jack,” she said. “Even if it’s ugly.”

“It can be right and ugly.” Alana sat down, with one leg hitched up, on the edge of a table. Her coat fell open to reveal a dark-blue suit. “You could be glad you did your job.”

Thinking about how to measure internally the distance between the fact that that should be true and the fact that it wasn’t, Clarice ran her fingers on the desk she sat on. She was searching for dust. There wasn’t any yet. “What are you doing here?”

“Leaving,” Alana said. “I was in protective custody with others. But the FBI cannot keep us here given that it doesn’t acknowledge anything else than their deaths.”

In this woman, something was about to crumble down. Clarice felt the bricks detaching and the whole start to wobble, even if none of it showed. She wondered how many other things were kept out of sight. “You speak as if they were in the room with us.”

A small huff that sounded like a breath. “They’re always in the room with me.”

Clarice grabbed her bag, took the files out and motioned for Dr. Bloom to join her. The main pictures were missing, but the others were pretty clear. “Your mind. Is this Hannibal Lecter?”

The pictures and files were placed contiguously on the desk. Alana looked at them all, like a mosaic. “It’s not Hannibal. And you know it,” she said, quickly. “And it’s not a copycat.”

“It’s too similar to not be related,” Clarice said, shaking her head.

Alana stepped away. She seemed afraid, even if it manifested as a crisp coldness. “We all have relations with killers,” she said.

Clarice’s phone chimed gently, reminding her to leave for her appointment at the State Attorney’s office. She turned around to gather the pictures and place them back in her bag. When she looked up, Alana Bloom was gone.

 

* * *

 

Getting the boat out of their tight bay was a varyingly complex process. The wind was too wild for Will to use the sails. He needed to maneuver between rocks and shoals. They used the motor up to the point they left the creek and headed into the river proper. Until then, Hannibal had watched, sitting against the hatch of the cabin, studying Will’s motions at the helm, the pressure he applied to procure steering, the watch he maintained, not on the boat’s bow, but on its hull, trying to feel it with his own body.

They slid smoothly along the Susquehanna River, waves catching them. Will had asked him to untie and set the sails. Once he had, the boat jumped into motion, more roughly, and Hannibal understood the appeal of feeling lost, at the mercy of sea, currents and waves. Yet, Will didn’t seem lost.

Stocked in the cabin were reserves of food. Some frozen in a large, ice-filled compartment, but most canned or dried, with packs of salted or preserved meat. Hannibal floated on the waves, lost in the sun that sank over the hills to the West.

Will asked him to take the helm and went below deck, coming back with bourbon and two glasses.

“The wind is different. Wilder, unexpected, loud,” Hannibal said. It blew his hair in all directions at once. He couldn’t tell where it came from.

“It’s not a good day,” Will said. He pointed at thin stratus clouds, dotting the horizon like short brushstrokes. “It’s going to rain. Maybe as early as tonight.” Feet firm despite the boat’s steady swaying, he poured them both glasses and handed Hannibal his.

Hannibal eyed the glass. The helm felt tense. He needed to hold it with both hands. It pulled on his right side, still freshly injured. He took the glass, drank it in one sip and gave it back. The wind tugged at Will’s hair as he watched him, somewhat curious.

Will sipped from his glass, slower, more controlled. “Did you love Murasaki?” he asked.

The boat angled to the right. Will’s eyes, attached calmly to the horizon, told Hannibal it was fine. A secret force seemed to pull them to the side. It released them as suddenly as it had appeared. “I am not certain.”

“At the time, were you?”

Hannibal’s memory recreated before him _the shape of Murasaki’s lips. They had parted when the knife slid in between the ribs, to let the life out_. “Yes.”

They were following the River. As they sailed, it widened and widened. Soon, the sky was open above them. “You love me,” Will said. “How aware of that are you?”

Before Hannibal, tons of water flowed and rocked, heavier than anything. It would crush them at any time. “In context, aware is an eerie word. Emotions do not reach us through knowledge.”

“No,” Will said. “They sway under it.”

The Chesapeake Bay spread out before them. Many other boats were afloat, not unlike a crowd of white triangles in the distance. Will cast a glance to the GPS and placed his empty glass down. He moved closer to Hannibal and took a hold of his arm to turn the helm with him. His fingers circled Hannibal’s wrist, like they had earlier. The mark of oil was gone now, but Hannibal’s skin remembered it. Deep in his brain, Will slid a knife through stomach, sternum and lungs to reach the heart. He held on to the helm.

He kept his eyes on the horizon, just as Will touched his cheek to Hannibal’s clothed shoulder. He rested it there long enough for warmth to permeate the sweater.

Will pulled away. Hannibal caught a whiff of bourbon, clinging to the skin. “Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?” Will said.

“North?”

“Yes,” Will said. “Before the fever started, I thought I’d bring Abigail, for a day or two, on a sailboat like this.”

The horizon, motionless, felt like a pull. It sucked them out of the bay of the Chesapeake and onto the waves. Gradually, Hannibal sensed them deepening, as if the wood, resin and fiberglass were wired into his nerves.

“What did she say?”

“That when she was ten, for the summer, her dad had planned to rent a boat. Her mother had said no. She was seasick.”

On the ocean, night wasn’t dark. It was comfort, set in between plush and crystalline. They sailed on. Will didn’t seem tired. His eyes didn’t ever lose track of the path they followed, going up to the sea before them, and back down to the GPS encased in the burgundy wood. Past midnight, Will took the helm and Hannibal went down the steps in the small cabin, folding himself onto the bunk bed. He pondered how much time did the faint layer of grease of human skin take to decay and disappear from the objects it touched. Did it disintegrate entirely? Wouldn’t some of it slip inside him, through the breathing pores of skin?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Lightest Way's [chapter 9](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5127935/chapters/12207467) takes place around chapter 39 or 40 here.


	40. 40.

The café had round, white tables and the windows were framed in golden. There were short palm trees in pots and glimpses of an Egyptian theme. Freddie had dressed as a chic art student. Her hair was tied in a loose bun down on the nape of her neck with a purple ribbon. She wore thick-rimmed glasses and a scarf patterned with miniature red kittens was wrapped around her neck with precise laxity. She had changed her paper pad for a notebook and took notes calmly. Sometimes, she would tilt her head up and look ahead, seemingly at nothing, searching for inspiration.

In fact, her eyes sought and found the tall mirror placed in the entrance. Through the foliage of a small areca, she watched the reflected shape of the FBI gray van. The past two evenings, they had left a little before six. The new crew came to replace them before seven. She had heard them file a report both times to report the breach of protocol. She would go tonight. The third time would be the last.

Just as her phone ticked to 5:45, the gray van left. She tapped her fingers on the table for five minutes, looking out in case the new crew had learned its lesson.

They hadn’t.

She slipped into the building unnoticed and reached Ardell Mapp’s apartment. Voices of people having dinner came through the closed doors in the corridors.

The place wasn’t sealed. She picked the lock on the second try.

Inside, everything was quiet and getting dark with the setting sun. Two peaches were rotting in a glass bowl in the kitchen. There were herbs by the window, above the sink. There had dried and died.

She sighed and took off her fake glasses. Of course, there was nothing in Mapp’s room. It was bland, white walls with a computer desk bearing only the traces of screens, outlined against dust, a tightly-made bed, a used velvet green couch with pink dots. Books were piled erratically with some magazines. The drawers had been searched.

Freddie pursed her lips and went back to the kitchen. She watered the plants, then opened the refrigerator, closed it and paced the room. Trailing her fingers along the counter, she stopped at a note pad. It looked often used. There were faint markings on it. Freddie frowned and took a pencil from her purse. She ran it over the paper. Numbers appeared gradually. Two series. Dots. At first, she couldn’t tell the ones from the sevens and two eights were blurry.

In the end, she was staring at two IP addresses. 38.37.138.9 and 75.59.52.78.

She ripped out the page she had blackened and left.

 

* * *

 

_Abigail had quickly lost the habit to brush her hair back over her left ear. Now, she would simply push it back to frame her face, with a finger trailing down her cheek. Hannibal knew that she thought about its absence. He hoped she had stopped thinking that he would kill her._

_She cleaned a fennel bulb in the sink, searching in between the stems for the last crumbs of black earth. “Do you want me to kill Will?” she said, drying the white root on a clean towel. “You wanted me to kill my dad.”  
_

_Hannibal slid the knife one last time into the onion. The slice fell atop the others, so thin that it was nearly transparent. “Sometimes, we need to kill our old life.”_

_“Will is your life now.”_

_“As you are,” he said. She met his eyes when handing him the bulb. They were less and less hiding how ardent she had become inside. It contrasted with the pale skin and the frail body._

_Together, they watched the butter melt in the pan. “Will killed this man, Randall Tier,” she said. “He killed Freddie Lounds.”_

_The onions sizzled and browned while Hannibal cut the fennel. “Do you want to kill him?”_

_For a moment, Abigail lowered her head. Hannibal let her think. While the fennel and onions cooked slowly on a low heat, he cut peppers in fine slices. They would grill atop the tart’s filling in the oven, while the double cream soaked the tart’s crust. Red, orange, yellow, in a spiraling motif, not dissimilar to the medieval rosette in the Chartres cathedral, but in reverse: tones of light and fire, instead of blue and white. Younger, he had patiently reconstructed the traces of the cathedral’s labyrinth for his memory palace, the path leading one from the inside out the exact mirror of the one leading from the outside in. Its turns and twists were far in his memory now, in somewhat of a dark place._

_“I think I could,” she said, finally._

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Will woke before Hannibal, who still slept on his bunk. The night had been quiet. He had found his marks quickly, the slightest change in rocking waking him, senses alert, hand to the cabin’s wall to feel for any kind of shake or dive. He felt the currents push and pull under them, as if they’d been right under his mattress.

Hannibal slept with his arm bent at the elbow over his face. Will could only suppose his eyes were closed. The covers were drawn neatly up to his stomach. He had taken off his sweater, but kept a t-shirt on, a pale gray, like the prison uniform. For so long, Will could not wipe from his mind the image of the well-dressed psychiatrist. Now, he could not unsee the jailed criminal, even in the intangible dawn of the boat. 

He checked on the instruments and went on deck. The sky was as still as stone. He barely felt a single breath of wind. A single chirp caught his attention. No birds went this far at sea. If they did, they weren’t strong enough to return. The chirping returned. Will’s gaze searched the mast and the cables. He found the bird nested into a small fold in the sail, near the gooseneck.

For a moment, he looked at the pale circle of the sun showing through the clouds, then at the sea. Back at the bird, all seemed to hold the same degree of reality. But then, he’d never felt any shift before. He slipped back down and took bread from the kitchen.

The bird refused to come out of its hiding place for the first hour. Will had rolled tiny pieces of bread between his fingers and set them on the deck near the mast, then retreated to sit on the hatch.

It was how Hannibal found him. “There’s a bird,” Will said.

The other man smoothened down one sweater sleeve and crossed his arms on his chest. In winter, the persistent cold of the sea mixed with the salted dampness of the air. After January, one could even encounter snow near the coast. “Do you mean to ask me if I’m seeing it as well?”

Will scoffed and lowered his gaze to his feet. “From the way you’re looking, I know you are.”

Hannibal took his eyes back to the bird. He held out his hand and Will gave him some of the bread he’d prepared. The bird hadn’t moved down to eat those scattered on the deck. Hannibal stepped carefully forward and placed them higher, in a fold of the sail. “This far at sea, he is most likely to die,” Hannibal said. “Unless it’s fed and protected.”

“It might not want to be cared for.”

“Maybe not. Wildness’s appearance of chaos masks how sheltering it can be,” Hannibal conceded.

They did not manage to capture the titmouse. It ate some bread crumbs, then flew upward. They could not see whether it had left the boat or not. Its wings mingled with the gray from the clouds.

Later in the afternoon, it began to wind, wickedly. The sail slapped as they strapped it to the mast. Before they did, Hannibal collected the remaining bread and slipped it into the pocket of his pants. His hands were drier, his skin seemed thicker already. It was only two days since they had left the coast of Pennsylvania and they were met with storms. It started with wind and it never turned into rain. The night came pregnant with dark and held breaths. The bird was nowhere to be seen.

Once Will could find an anchoring, Hannibal cooked for dinner. Will sat at the table before an empty plate, his skin smelling of chaffing wind and sea, as if it were infused in salt. The image of curing Will’s flesh, somewhere on the vast, golden beaches of the Mediterranean came to his mind, but slipped out, unreal, leaving something tender in its wake. “When we ate birds, it wasn’t this windy,” Will said.

Hannibal stopped, hands above the sink, the boat rocking softly, deep under him. “We were not at sea, either,” he said. “Titmice are not fat enough and have bigger bones.”

“And that one’s hungry. Waifish.” Will got up to wash his hands.

As they stood together by the sink, Hannibal watched the trickling of water over the callous fingers. There were two blisters on each palm, from tying and untying the cables, and turning the winches to slacken the sails. His own skin felt ticker, safer. It allowed him to hide the flesh inside instead of revealing it. Will didn’t wince from the pain.

“Where did you plan to take Abigail on your boat?”

Will dried his hands on his shirt, leaving trails of fingers on the wool, darkening its gray to black. “In Florida,” Will said. “But I was afraid she’d feel imprisoned. Boats can feel like that.”

“They also set you free.”

“It does that only because you agree to be imprisoned,” Will said. “Momentarily and insofar as land isn’t in reach.”

“Confinement can be refreshing. Quiet the wails of the world. Especially if the space chosen is one that agrees with you.”

“The wailing of the world.” Will stepped away. “Is that what you think he’s doing? Wailing for you?”

Hannibal dried his hands on a towel and moved to the tiny oven. Warmth filled the room when he opened it. “Maybe Mr. Rubin would like us to have another session as therapist and patient,” he said. “I’ll have to tell him my medical license has been revoked.”

Will scoffed, but he was elsewhere. They ate in silence, with Abigail nearly sitting between them again. Her shadow waned every time Will looked. Absentmindedly, Will’s fingers twisted the wedding ring on his left hand. It had loosened during the earliest days of his recovery at Bedelia's house. But now he had gained the weight back and it was bonded tight to the skin, hard to detach.

“You were thinner when you got it,” Hannibal said, hands framing the small beige cup from which he drank coffee.

The lamp swayed above them, carried by the rocking. “The trial cut into my appetite.”

Will went back on deck to make sure the boat was steady on its anchor. The water was a shimmering black and the sky a distant gray, from the light coming from the coast. The noise caught his attention. The bird waited for him, nested again in the folded up sail, near the mast. Will got close enough to it to see that its feathers were ruffled. He searched his pocket and gave him the remaining bread crumbs.

While the bird ate, Will went to the bow. He tried a violent pull on the ring and hissed at the indentation in the skin of the knuckle. He wondered if it would be like this, if his skin would slowly swallow the markings of his life one by one. It would first absorb the ring, then wash out the scars.

A drop of blood slid from the cut and circled the ring. Suddenly, the common pains of his still healing body returned to him with a rush of fear and the hot violence of screams in the night. All things were hurting as if he had tried to pry them from himself too. His cheek, his shoulder, his thigh. The bruises on his ribs, where the skin felt thicker still, even if the purples and yellows were gone.

 

* * *

 

The first few days, Ardell guessed, if there were such things as days now – maybe time had been scared out of here – were spent in nightmares. It was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. It was a continuous flow of fears, morphing into each other. Faces becoming walls becoming monsters becoming screams from his own throat. 

When Billy stopped the drip, the world had gone to ashes. He tensed at every movement. Every motion, even the ones from inside his body, caused a rush to his brain.

“Water?” Billy said.

Ardell tried to shake his head. It was held as stiffly as before. His back ached. “It’ll make me think I’m drowning.”

The worst, Ardell thought, was that these nightmares didn’t feel like his, as if the contents of his mind had been scrambled and rearranged. He dreamed of attacks, nights and coiling lack of courage. “Do you want that?” Billy said.

“Is the plan killing all of Hannibal Lecter’s family?”

“Wrong question, but you’re not freezing.”

Ardell was afraid that his thoughts would only come together as an horrifying shape. It had teeth, it always had teeth, small ones, numerous, like a shark. “Would it be a good plan to kill all of his family?” he tried again.

“Better,” Billy appreciated. “No. It wouldn’t. Familial violence isn't my type of interaction.”

Closing his eyes, Ardell sighed. There was a clearer light than last time. Robertas Lecter’s head was no longer in sight. But, at the end of the room, beyond Billy, there was a box on a table, large enough to hold it. “What’s your type of interaction?”

Billy looked up from what he was doing. The crude surgical lamp was cruel. He appeared much older, with wrinkled skin from the temples to the jaw, the forehead bare and the cheeks fat. “It’s difficult to consider that,” he said. “You sort of have to think of yourself in the third person.” He shrugged. “I’ll keep it in mind, though.”

“How did you find Robertas Lecter?”

Billy smiled. “The same way I found Byron Metcalfe.”

 


	41. 41.

They arrived in Muskrat farm through the long way around, the one Alana had taken first. It was filled with trees that had grown into their way on the path and there was no lighting at all. In the car, the guards murmured among themselves and exchanged on the radio, in case someone would come from under the trees’ cover, or jump from behind a pine. Nour Ayesh was with her.

Ever since this had started, she had grown accustomed to her escort. Somewhere inside herself, she was no longer afraid of Hannibal. She didn’t know if Dr. Ayesh was afraid. She did not manifest fear. Bedelia had said Nour had finally agreed to participate in the plan. As they climbed into the car, Alana had offered the veterinarian to assist during the surgery. Nour had stilled, said nothing and slipped inside her seat.

They got to the last barrier before the farm. One guard stayed in the car and the driver stepped out to pull it open. Weed had grown through the metal fence of the barrier. It was dead, bleached by cold and snow now. Alana’s car went in first, followed by the car housing Miriam and Bedelia.

The place they would use was the same Mason would have used, she thought. Due to legal confusions, things were unchanged, preserved as they had been that night, with only the most visible traces of crime wiped by the federal agents. Alana pointed the building, an ancient stable, tall and wooden, but impeccably clean inside, with cement floors and walls draped in plastic sheets. The surgical beds had been dismantled, but were still there, with Will Graham’s DNA on one of them, Mason Verger’s on the other.

“We won’t be using those,” Margot’s voice said, as she stepped out of the dark. “I got us some new things.”

Alana froze. “You came in through the main gate?”

“It wasn’t well guarded,” Margot said.

“Where’s Morgan?”

Margot’s eyes went to Bedelia Du Maurier, behind Alana, who advanced toward the main surgical area and stood distantly among the empty theater where her bed would be. Beside her, a guard from Margot’s escort rolled a portable respirator in its place. She swallowed and Margot saw her imagining it going down her throat. “He’s at home.”

“Is he okay?”

For a moment, Margot’s silence became heavy. “He’ll be fine,” she said. “We’ll all be fine. One day.”

Miriam came forward too and walked past them. She didn’t recognize the place, but seemed at ease here. There was a sort of vibrating energy around her, as if she was just about to physically free herself from the ties holding her down. Nour Ayesh stayed by the door, her fingers trailing on the medical equipment that was rolled in, dark machines taped in layers of plastic wrap.

Alana had not seen Margot look this horrified in years. Horror was something specific in Margot’s features. It took the shape of resistance: her jaw clamped down, she lowered her head slightly and squared her shoulders, exactly as if she was bracing for a shock that would never come. And she knew that when it did come, it would shatter her. Alana’s eyes became hot with tears. “Are you angry we’re doing this?”

“I’m… fraught,” Margot sighed. “As if the whole place is holding its breath. And when it lets it out, we’ll all burn in it.”

“This can work,” Alana said.

“It’s insane.” Margot shrugged. The horror hadn’t left her. “But the world is, and people seem to thrive in it.”

Behind them, Nour had walked closer to the make-shift operating theater. The guards unfolded the bed now. It came with blue sheets, gray railings and beige straps to keep the body positioned if required. “There has to be some truth in meeting fire with fire.”

Margot walked to the wall near them and tapped her fingers against the thermostat there. It was old and round, with a red marker that flickered under the glass when she touched it. She turned it and, somewhere, water heaters hissed a long, high-pitched sound. “I suppose that eventually, fires eat oxygen. More fire, less oxygen. No oxygen, no fire,” she said. “But in the middle, there is a moment when we are all combusted in a blazing furnace.”

A tear rolled down Alana’s cheek. “I thought we could let violence enter our lives and then walk away from it.”

Not entirely smiling, but less stricken now, Margot came closer. “Violence is adept at letting you think you control it.” She brushed the tear from Alana’s cheek. “The only way out of it is to let it think you’ve let it control you.”

“We have let it,” Alana said. “It’s everywhere in us.”

“That should be scary.”

“I’m not scared.” Alana wiped the one other tear that followed. She stepped back, but kept a hand clasped on the fur or Margot’s coat. “I used to treat depression. It seems prehistorical now,” she said. “Depression shatters points of view. It makes it impossible to focus on what is causing harm, distress or pain. Your mind heals only when it knows in how much pain it is.” 

_“How are you today, Margot?” It was March. She had just returned from school. When asked about the uniform, she had chosen the one with the pants and the sweater. Her father had foregone her wishes entirely and gotten her skirts as well, which she never wore._

_“I’m fine, Mason.” She tried to pass him in the corridor. He blocked her way._

_“You don’t look fine. You look kind of gray,” he said, always taunting. “Are you depressed?”_

_“I’m fine, Mason,” she repeated in the exact same voice. She tried to push him out of her way. They were at the moment of life when, without trying, he was easily stronger than her._

_He didn’t move and clasped her arm. She had to pull on it so hard to yank it out that his fingernails left traces on the skin through the dark-blue sweater. “I think you’re depressed. It’s in your brain, you know. Your brain needs happiness.”_

From the way Alana looked at her, Margot knew she had stiffened as memory and words fused together, wiring her brain to stop in slimy times. “I can’t focus on what is hurting me. I don’t know where it is,” she said, low, careful.

Her gut still tied, Margot exhaled softly. “It can be because everything is out to hurt you.”

 

* * *

 

The archives of the Baltimore City State's Attorney were not meant to be accessed on a regular basis. They had the transcript of Hannibal Lecter’s 1997 testimony on a microfilm in a basement somewhere. They could get it for her in a week, normally, but they could do it in 24 hours for a fee. Clarice paid and was about to leave when the short man at the library desk said, “We’ve got the tape, of course.”

“There’s a recording of his testimony?” she said. “I thought they had filed it.”

The man gave an elegant shrug. “Could be anything, could be the officer who was evaluated, could be some equipment testing.” He eyed the next person in line over Clarice’s shoulder, a lady with long black hair and sunglasses, who clutched a parking ticket and seemed to be in the wrong place. “Do you want it?”

“It’s here?” she said. “Yes, I want it.”

He pointed her to the end of the room. A brown door led to a corridor that seemed unlit. A small sign on the wall had “Other Medias” written on it. “This,” he said, handing her a card with a long number scribbled down on it, “is the number of the recording. Patrick in there will set it up for you.” 

She thanked him and went past the thick, old brown doors. Patrick had long hair, wore beige overalls on top of an old gray t-shirt and manipulated the tapes as carefully as he would a baby. Clarice liked him. The place wasn’t well-lit. There were lamps on each of the three listening-posts and one on the counter. If Clarice ever tried to imagine her mind, she would hope it looked like this from the inside, a mix of ordered old and new, all of them known, all of it quiet. She knew the image was powerless. Since Ardell has disappeared, all had begun to clash and known sights had twisted in asunder fields, splintered with fears.

Clarice’s recording was on top of a shelf. “Can I download it?” she asked Patrick.

Patrick chuckled. “We don’t have that kind of fartsy-tartsy ‘ware to put this analogical beauty on whatever iPod you have,” he said. “You can take notes, if you like.” Clarice thought that magnetic recordings weren’t per say analogical, but she said nothing.

She took the listening desk that was as far from Patrick as possible. Between her hands, she held a bulky, black player that had a small reading head and an adjustable pick-up. It allowed many types of magnetic tapes to be played on it. The tape was for the entire day in room 2 of the precinct. Patrick had found her the right moment, after searching in a thick notebook with handwriting.

Clarice put on the headphones. The clear voice of a young woman reading the case file number welcomed her. After she had finished, the voice of an officer came in, brash, but uninterested. The voice she heard then was much younger than the one she had heard during the trial. Its English was a bit more broken and it often seemed to pause to fetch for the proper word. Clarice shivered. She could not listen to this here, in this place that reminded her so much of her own mind and with Patrick watching her openly from the counter. She pressed the rewind button and brought it back to its starting point. She turned the volume up until it cracked to miss nothing and was thankful the recording was not stereo. Then she put the headphones back on her ears and, leaning down to put her chin in her hand so Patrick wouldn’t see her, she slipped her phone between her right ear and the headphone.

 

* * *

 

In a pale blue hospital gown, Bedelia Du Maurier looked smaller than she ever had. The bed was an ocean around her.

Nour Ayesh was by the sink and washed her hands, wrists and forearms. The material was lined on a tray. Miriam was standing back. Margot had left, cold and crisp. Alana had washed and changed into antiseptic clothing. She was the only one to remain by Bedelia’s side. She had lost balance. She didn’t know if she had already jumped off the precipice into the abyss, or if she was just swaying on the edge. It could not have mattered. She would have liked fear, now. And all she had was a long, tiring sentiment of frailty.

“I never asked you what was your opinion on cruelty,” Bedelia said. She looked at the ceiling.

“It’s late for that,” Alana said.

“Is this cruel?”

“You might be. But this isn’t.” Nour Ayesh returned, tying her mask on her face with fingers still wet. She went around Alana to pull the curtains around the theater, closing them off from view. Alana pushed her own mask over her face. Surgery had to be done hidden, after all. They wouldn’t want to body to stare back up at them as they cut it open and know who they were. “Count down from ten,” she told Bedelia.

They had no breathing mask for the anesthesia. On Alana’s nod, Dr. Ayesh pushed the plunger on a syringe attached to the intravenous line, counted ten seconds on their timer and pushed another one.

Bedelia had reached number three before her head had lolled back. Her eyelids flickered into darkness. Her left hand was resting on her hip, near the thigh. It fell down on the gurney. Nour strapped it down and then covered the torso and right leg with another blue sheet.

Assisting to yet another burial, Alana stayed by Bedelia’s head to monitor for signs of pain.

 

\--

 

Clarice still carried her bag with her. When she left the archives, she stopped in the first parking lot that felt sufficiently away and tested her recording. The sound was as clear as day.

For a while, she drove aimlessly. Her legs had the weight that settled in them when she didn’t run enough. She hadn’t eaten anything since morning and couldn’t get a single spark of effort out of herself. She felt on the verge of crumpling. It was night already and she imagined herself on a violet coverlet in a bland room, turning the volume up on the recording to mask the words of neighbors arguing in the other room. She didn't want that.

Suddenly, it was obvious where she should go. She had only one other home.

On the way there, she stopped at a small Chinese grocer to buy packs of ramen noodles.

She arrived at Chandel Square before ten. Of all the things the house made her feel, comfort was not the most prominent one. But it was the only place where she felt she owned herself. Something pulled her inside, the broken dark wood walls and the relinquishment of neglected, soaked furniture. It felt harmless.

Slipping in the burst door in the back was more difficult with her bag, but she pulled through with only a small scratch to her arm. She searched the rooms for squatters and scavengers. When she found everything empty, she settled in the study.

She ate her noodles dry, breaking them with her fingers through the wrapping, with her coat wrapped around her shoulders as a shelter. Then she put on the recording on speaker phone. The sounds echoed on the walls and came back to her, flying. Hannibal Lecter was precise and thorough. He offered his help to the officer at the end - if he could be of any assistance, he said, they would be wise to contact him.

Clarice played it again. Then again. Then again until she stopped hoping that there would be anything else on it than a name. Billy Rubin.

Getting up, she wrote it on the clear wall of the study, in tall letters that she could see from where she sat.

She was certain it was the same killer. Wherever he was, Hannibal Lecter must be certain it was also the same person. She tried thinking of what they could want to say to each other. She hadn’t found it when she fell asleep.

 


	42. 42.

From the other side of the street, Billy waited for the guards to take their walk around Ardell’s apartment building. He moved smoothly and touched his fingers to the shoulder of the one on the right. As he turned around, Billy slid the blade through his heart. It sank in partly of its own volition, the man impaling himself as he was spinning on his heels. Before the other had reached for his gun, Billy had tased him with his left hand.

He had been unwilling to leave Ardell for even a minute. At home, even though he could leave him alone, he would still monitor the room and have his eyes on him, even during the night. But there was no more appropriate place for this head.

Once the FBI agents were on the ground, he had little time. He went to the apartment where he had showed up only days before. With Ardell Mapp’s key, he slipped inside.

The head went on the kitchen table. He turned it so that it seemed to look at the sun.

He truly wondered if the great French _pâtissiers_ had considered this application. They had designed food to be beautiful with usefulness in mind. The more beautiful it was made to be, the more seductive it would be to someone’s eye, and the eye was only centimeters above the palate. People felt much more comfortable eating beauty than eating something that already had the shape of digested goods.

But beauty was empty, too. It wasn’t enough. And he wished for no one’s comfort. His only true frustration was the inability to leave any recipe behind. If he was to give shape to truth with flesh, it should live on. For such a long time, cooks had thought it was unnecessary to mark quantities in their cooking books. His work was quantity, his work was precision, his work was death.

 

* * *

 

Nour remembered.

Before going into veterinary medicine, she had tried medical school, for one year, then she changed. That year had been the worst in her life. It wasn’t the competition she could not stand, it was that everyone was meant to do as if it did not exist. She made no friends, no one was pleasant and she felt dysphoric and abandoned. She supposed veterinary medicine would have been somewhat the same to her if she had not lost all hopes in medical training first. Students fought against each other, silently, discreetly.

But the animals saved her. She was on par with them. They did not want to talk, they did not seek her out to gain anything from her. She did not have to be scared. If they were angry, they bit down on the parts of her that they could reach. Teeth were good, teeth were frank.

As per Dr. Du Maurier’s request, she started at mid-thigh. With the face hidden, the body of a human being seemed much more vulnerable. The head was its most complex part. The rest was fragile. Skin that needed to be clothed and cleaned regularly. Articulations and muscles that were too weak for most of what it inflicted on itself.

The scalpel went in. Amputation was a simple task on paper. In fact, where a large limb was concerned, what was most important was to make sure the body didn’t panic. There were over twenty clamps by her to shut down the smaller blood vessels. The tourniquet had shut blood down from the femoral artery. Dr. Bloom had left once Bedelia's vital signs had stabilized. Alone under the bright surgical lamp, with all but black beyond her, Nour started detaching the fat from the flesh in order to peel the skin back to close over the stump. It wasn’t entirely unlike killing someone, she thought. Killing would be faster. Life left someone almost instantly, faster than the blink of an eye, more tender and true than anything. She pondered if killers tried to hold on it, while she had it in slow-motion before her.

The bone saw shone in the darkness, near her. She felt like she was about to shut down. Like her hands kept moving on their own. Why was she so strong?

 

* * *

 

The kitchen they used was the one in the west wing, because it was closest to the stables. Margot walked in to smells of meat cooking. Alana was there. She had hired personnel from a catering company. She had not tried to tell them it was a prank, she had only paid them ten times the amount they charged. They were putting the second part of the leg, the lower-half, in the oven. It was wrapped in layers of leaves. A sweet odor came from the rich glaze.

“Is the surgery over?”

Alana shook her head. “About one hour left.”

“Bedelia Du Maurier will recover from this,” Margot said.

“Maybe not.” Alana crossed her arms over her chest. She had taken off her jacket. Her blouse was dirty at the top. There were traces of blood near the collar. They had paled a little, but she hadn’t washed them off. “Maybe no one of us gets out.” 

Margot licked her lips. Her face was warm. She felt like it was going to fall apart. “Once Lecter finds out, what happens?”

The catering staff were silent. They were paid not to listen as well. Margot wondered if they had been hired for one of Hannibal Lecter’s dinner parties, before everything fell apart. “He’ll know she did this to herself,” Alana said. “And Hannibal likes to talk with people when they do peculiar, irregular things.”

“So he gets in touch with her?”

“At the hospital,” Alana said. Her face was drawn, large circles under her eyes made the skin seem paler and darker at the same time. “Either he comes alone and we kill him. Or he comes with Will.”

A harmonious sound rang. It went deep down Margot’s stomach to search for memories there. The first half of the leg was ready, in the oven. Catering staff gathered. “What if we have to kill them both?” she said.

“I don’t think Will would be opposed,” Alana said, after a moment. “I hope he wouldn’t.” 

The first half of the leg had cooked slowly during the last hour and a half. Men and women in white tunics applied more glaze to it and closed the cocoon of leaves back around it. It looked like a large parasite that had entirely eaten and now inhabited its green host.

“What is it?” Margot asked.

Alana huffed quietly. “Pork. Compressed, with veal femurs inside.”

 

* * *

 

It was dawn and the water under the boat was steadier. The sunlight was clear but still dim in the cabin and Will’s bed was empty on the other side, with the covers drawn tight. Hannibal pushed the coverlet back and rose. There was less echo in the hull, the waves were much less tall, they had less volume of water to move about. They were closer to shore than they had been in their previous moorings.

As he dressed, he slipped a knife in the side of his boot. The boat was still asleep, its sails drawn, its instruments sleeping and the helm locked in place. It was small enough that he knew Will had left. The bird was nowhere to be seen either.

Around him was a deserted marina, situated in a creek, surrounded by trees on the north. To the south, the decks faded into lower wharfs meant for fishing boats until, finally, they blended with a beach of pebbles, sand and weed. All of it was dotted with snow, melting into puddles, mingling with the sea. Herring gulls turned in the sky above. In fact, the titmouse had no doubt flown to land now.

Hannibal left the boat. The dock where they had moored was empty, save for an old yacht, covered in a protective sheet, in storage there for the duration of winter. There was no one in sight. The shops near the parking were closed.

Past the few establishments were only gray sand dunes, covered in snow. The tips of tall grass protruded from the white cover. He found footsteps there, digging deep in the ground and followed them. Water collected in his shoes. The knife wounds in his legs woke up to tingle and pull at the flesh.

He found Will nearly a mile inland. The dunes had diminished and become a white field. Will waited before a barrier of trees. Beyond it was a road and lights that shone in the morning. A sole car passed by.

“I can’t remember the color of her eyes,” Will said. “Behind the mirror shards.” He had sat on a fallen tree. Some snow, blown from a tree, had landed on his shoulder. Hannibal sat with him. Will’s ring finger was bleeding, the skin was swollen.

“What happens if you remove the mirrors?”

Will shook his head, trying to fence away something in him. Things were moved around as other things tried to live there. “Even in my imagination, I can’t touch her. I don’t know what will touch her if I do.”

“You intended to give her back the ring?”

A crow had landed in a nearby tree, causing snow to fall from its top branches onto the ground in a hustle. Will watched it fly away. “I gave her my life. I wish I could give _that_ back to her.” 

“There is no pledge more wishful, more charged than the one in which the offering is not in itself entirely known,” Hannibal said. “Your dead hopes are heavy.”

“They are,” Will nodded. He lifted his left hand with the ring starched in blood dried and recent. “It won’t help.”

Hannibal took hold of Will’s hand by the wrist to examine it. It was a difficult wound, not caused by the unwanted presence of something within flesh, but by its removal. How many things would be torn? “It won't help you. But you think it could help her,” Hannibal said. He moved his thumb over the short band of raw flesh and Will winced. 

“I thought of cutting my finger off,” Will said. Some remnants of water clung to his eyelids. It could have been flakes of snow, or tears, caught there and frozen.

The ring was simple. Its gold was pale. Underneath it, Will’s red skin wanted to melt in the snow and disappear there forever, to leave of him only an animal of flesh and bone. It would have felt right to him. “How many dogs?” Hannibal asked.

Will closed his eyes. “No.”

“Did she keep yours?”

Will stood up from the tree and took out his pocket knife. Hannibal crossed his hands in his lap and lifted his head to the trees. Branches were scattered above them like vines, eating away the wall of the sky. Will placed his left hand flat on the tree, fingers stretched. And what if the sky would truly crumble to let in heaven? Would the angels survive the fall amid pieces of the realm they had built to endear souls? He rested the short knife against his fingers and clenched his teeth. “The blade is not sharp enough. It won’t get you through bone,” Hannibal said.

“I’ll tear it off.”

“I would not kill them,” Hannibal said. Will stopped. The blade had indented the skin. Drops of blood trickled in the snow. Hannibal nodded to the ring. “I can carry that life. There and back.”

“You wanted to kill them,” Will said. His face was devoid of all, but a blunt regret for the things he was about to agree to. 

“To make the Dragon enter your soul and your dreams, where you had previously touched his crimes only with the long digits of your mind,” Hannibal said. “It was necessary to pervade your attention and keep it.”

Will’s eyes searched for his. In them, the life that had been there surfaced once more, all sorrow now, which he only longed to change into loss. “You pervaded.”

“Your hand,” Hannibal asked. Will gave it. 

Some blood coated Hannibal’s fingers as he took Will’s and fanned them out. He folded all of them except the ring finger. “How many dogs?” he said. Then he lifted Will’s hand to his mouth and slipped the reddened finger inside.

His gaze attached to Hannibal’s lips, Will felt no teeth, only a tongue wrapped around the skin, warm and soft. For a moment, he thought Hannibal would close his jaw down on it, bone, flesh, ring. He imagined it would bleed out, like Dolarhyde’s throat had. “Nine,” he whispered. “Maybe more.” Hannibal released his finger. His lips glistened with Will’s blood. Circling the wet digit deftly with his index and thumb, he pulled the ring off and away. Will only felt the tingling of saliva seeping into the irritated skin and the cold freezing it.

With a handkerchief drawn from his coat, Hannibal cleaned Will’s finger. He wrapped the cloth around it snugly. “Trained?”

“Yes,” Will said. “Four big, four small. I don’t know about the last one she got when I was on the case.” The reality of the words snapped, Will thought, as soon as they left his mouth. They fell at his feet, remnants of an old world that felt like home where a stranger lived. The stranger was still him. He still looked right at Will as the walls of Molly's house blew up and apart and he was combusted into flames.

Hannibal stood and looked Will up and down. “Your coat, sweater and t-shirt.”

They undressed quickly in the cold. It had started to snow now and it prickled at their skin. The ring gleamed on the fallen tree before them. Will’s coat was large enough for Hannibal, but the rest of his clothing clung to him, like he wore a second skin. 

“Guns in the house, I expect?”

Will nodded. Then he opened his mouth, closed it again. “I was going to ask you not to hurt anyone.”

Adjusting Will’s clothes on him as best he could, Hannibal gave a thin smile. He took the ring where it lied, put it in the pocket of Will’s coat and turned back to him. “When you entered that life, had it occurred to you that you could lose it?”

It took Will a moment to answer. On the road after the tree line, the cars came by regularly now. “You never lost anything like it.”

“I never had anything like it,” Hannibal said. He pulled the hood of the coat over his head. Will followed him with his eyes until the road, then lost him there, a tiny figure with his clothes, his smell, his heart, his mind.

 

* * *

 

_Alana knew that, whenever she was upset, she seemed angry, as if her body’s exterior needed to seal tight before it would even feel anything. She swallowed and took her eyes from her shoes to the monitor above Molly Graham’s bed.   “Who are you?” Molly’s sleepy voice asked as she cracked her eyes open._

_“My name is Alana Bloom. I… worked with Will, before he arrested Lecter. I wanted to speak with you, if that’s alright.”_

_“Okay.”_

_Alana nodded in the direction of the couch, where the young boy slept, his face turned away from the bright lights above. “Is he asleep?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_Lacing her fingers on her knees, Alana knew that she should get to the point. Molly Graham did not care for kindness. Nothing would help her, at least not for some time. “Before he escaped, Lecter threatened to kill me, my wife and my son. We’ll be leaving the country,” Alana explained. “We have a dog. We can’t take her with us. I was going to leave her at the shelter.” She stopped abruptly. It was like the words had stopped making sense even before they had left her mouth. She moved to get. “I’m sorry. This wasn’t a good idea.”_

_“All ideas started turning into dust recently,” Molly said.  
_

_Alana turned, struck at the other woman’s incisiveness. “There’s a reason why Will loves you,” she said. Will seemed different when Alana had seen him. Strong and capable, and away, with everything swaddled snugly inside so that it would not disturb the peace that held the shards together in the resin of the mind.  
_

_Tears welled up in Molly’s eyes. “What’s your dog’s name?” she asked._

_“You really don’t have to.”_

_“Yes, I do,” Molly said. “Shelters seriously suck.”_

_“Her name is Applesauce.”_

_The tiny smile made the bruises on Molly’s face look uglier. “Homemade or not?” she asked. “The applesauce. How do you make it for her?”_

_“In the oven.”_

_Molly nodded slowly. Her eyes went to the television then to her son and she kept them there. “What they say about Will…” she started. “Is it true? That he helped him escape?”_

_Alana walked closer, as smoothly as possible so her heels would not click on the floor. She sat on the bed, at the end, near Molly’s feet. This time, she tried to be as honest as she could. She was not thinking of Molly, but of Abigail in her hospital bed. And slowly that image became Morgan, in his bed, at home. He had slept in it for the last time, last night. Now he was excited about leaving. They had told him it was a trip. “Will saw something in Hannibal Lecter,” she said.“I never knew what. But whatever it was, it stayed with him.”_

_“That’s a yes?”_

_“Whenever Hannibal Lecter is concerned, all things tangible tend to change. The fabric of reality thins, its moorings dissolve. A different darkness sets in, that doesn’t really look like shadows at all at first. It’s gloom and objects begin to rearrange in other shapes.”_

_Molly fell silent for a moment. They both listened to Walter breathing. “Were you and Will-…” Molly started._

_“No,” Alana said.  She recalled who she was then, almost as clearly as if she was again standing in the corridor leading to the Chandel Square kitchen, still holding the gun on Hannibal. “I was with Hannibal.”_

_The other woman turned to her and her mouth twisted. “What was that like?”_

_For a time, Alana searched for words. She laid her hands flat on her thigh, let the warmth soak the skin. “It was rapturing and refined. Magnificent, in the way fate is when it’s mocking you,” she said. “One could stop knowing who they were. Who they love.”_

 


	43. 43.

 

* * *

 

_Oiling out (v.)_ : As a temporary measure, applying drying oil to the place on a painting where the color has been absorbed by the canvas, causing it to appear matte or dead, in order to restore its shine.

 

* * *

 

That morning began as one of the worst days in Freddie Lounds’s recent life and ended excellently, taking her through a spectrum of emotions so wildly disseminated that she scarcely had time to transcribe them into words.

She was having breakfast at her computer, her teeth nuzzling the straw that plunged into her blueberry-peach-spinach smoothie. Beside her wrist, tucked between the laptop’s body and screen, was the small piece of white paper with the numbers traced in white over graphite. She had searched for them last night, when coming back from Ardell Mapp’s apartment. They didn’t exist as IP addresses, at least not currently.

Her attention was claimed by the screen as soon as she accessed Lurid Facts, a recent, budding competitor. She frowned and checked again. The local news mentioned it as well. Adding insult to injury, it was still featured on CNN’s main page.

Fuming, her breakfast forgotten, Freddie swore never to sleep again. Cake Monster must have come in Mapp’s apartment only moments after she’d left. Her heart tightened at the thought that he may even have been there while she was.

She got up to change out of her robe into proper clothes. The FBI’s announcement at the Quantico Field Office would be held in the afternoon. She could still make it. And she could still have privileged information by the time she got there. She would.

In the tepid darkness of her bedroom, the computer screen showed the newly found head. It had been placed in Ardell Mapp’s apartment over night. There was some blur to it, but the features were clear. She had recognized Robertas Lecter instantly. He was quite the rumor of the town when Hannibal Lecter’s trial had started.

Placed on the table, the head was inclined lightly backward. The neck had been severed four inches below the ears. With its open mouth, the head seemed to come up from the water to breathe in some air, eyes closed, hair plastered on its forehead. Two flies were visible on the right temple.

As Lurid Facts had titled, “This One Won’t Be Cake”.

 

* * *

 

Since Will and Hannibal had been here, Bedelia’s house had been cleaned. The bedroom and guest room were the places where Alana’s eyes trailed. The sheets seemed spotless and the coverlet was neat, fluffed in place, but she wondered if they had bled in there. She hovered near the window as well.

An armchair was angled to look outside. It was maybe not meant to be used like this, Bedelia didn’t give the impression that she gazed outside. But Alana’s mind took her _to see Hannibal seated there, his peace like a vague air of doom. She had once entered his office, knocking only once and lightly, using the door through which patients normally exited. She had known he was alone. He hadn’t been surprised, but she had noticed something on his features, something like sheer, elevated joy, as he sat in his therapist’s chair, eyes on the chair opposite him. The sentiment, whatever it was, sank back within and was expunged_.

“Everything's ready,” Nour Ayesh’s voice said. Alana found her waiting, darker than the white of the corridor in the paler doorframe. She carried a leather package, tucked under her arm, bound with a strap. Its copper buckle had the shape of a twisting snake. It contained glass bottles and needles, unidentified. Bedelia had assured Alana she knew what was in each of them. “She offered to inject herself,” Nour said.

Alana shook her head. “I’ll do it.”

From the top of the stairs, the living room was visible. Bedelia's furniture had been removed and stored. Following its auction, Bedelia Du Maurier had in her possession most of Hannibal Lecter’s furniture that was not still under the State Attorney’s warrant.  For this once, they had used his dining room’s table. Bedelia insisted that they had two chairs and place-settings, as well as her own.

Everything was similar to what Alana remembered. The white porcelain plates, not as high-end as Christofle. The black wood of the table, polished by use. Even the candles and centerpiece. Something twisted inside her and made her feel empty, as she noted that she remembered a lot of things, all of them clear. Why couldn’t she forget? Why would the deepest parts of her mind cling to this?

While the catering staff presented Bedelia with her own plate, oysters in a Marsala sauce, Alana filled the needle. The bottles were new, their rubber caps unpierced. There was no way to name precisely the golden liquid inside. Bedelia had told her the proportions. “You don’t want to know what they are?”

Alana had swallowed thickly. “The same he gave you in Florence?” she had said slowly. At Hannibal’s trial, Metcalfe had tried pushing forward the theory of an elaborate plan, devised to incriminate Hannibal Lecter further. A plan in which all his so-called victims had played a part in order to cause a mental breakdown in an otherwise respected person. Jack Crawford had testified that he had witnessed the finding of Hannibal’s fingerprints on the needles and bottles found in Hannibal’s Florence apartment - even though the Questura had subsequently lost the proof itself through a shipping mistake, the glass arriving smashed in Rome where it had been sent for detailed analysis.

The gown Bedelia had chosen had a very deep decolletage. Alana could barely imagine Hannibal making the same choice. He would have considered it somewhat gross. Or maybe it was the only one with a cut on the left side that displayed her bandaged leg properly. It assumed Freddie Lounds would take her picture standing in front of the table, opposite the central place-setting. Looking at it like this, it really seemed to have been made only for Freddie's eye.

Alana cleaned Bedelia’s arm and set the needle in. For the sake of appearances, she had brushed makeup over the dots marking her arm where the intravenous line had been. Her eyes were unfocused, already. The eyelids fluttered and closed when the plunger was pushed.

Margot walked in. The candles were in place, unlit. Once the injection was done and Alana had placed a small white gauze to catch the red drop of blood, Margot closed the ceiling lights and they were engulfed in half-darkness. The blinds barely filtered the light from outside. “He’ll know it’s a trap,” Margot said.

“That won’t stop them from coming.” Alana placed the bottles back in their holds and closed the leather. “Curiosity. The need to see with your own eyes, touch the world, bring it to your mouth.” She left the leather medical pouch on one of the chairs against the wall, on display. Bedelia’s eyes followed it, just as they clouded some more.

“If they don’t come and see me at the hospital,” Bedelia said, the words starting to slur and melt together, “you’ll know it soon enough.”

Alana turned to Margot. “We’re waiting 24 hours after Freddie posts it,” she explained. “Then we’ll go back home.”

Understanding came to Margot like the dawn in the winter: so slowly, no one could tell when it had changed her features into a tensed mask of doubt. “Then he’ll come home,” she said. “Was it planned like this all along? Or did it just occur to you?”

Giving a sad smile, Alana felt the thread between her and Margot grow thinner and frailer than it had ever been. It glimmered between them as Miriam Lass lit the candles on the table. They shone like the good guidance of the North star.

“It was organic,” Bedelia said. “It grew as a vine does, following the inflections of what it’s nested around.”

Two young men from the catering staff came in and placed the leg at the center of the table. It was still smoking. They had reheated it in Bedelia’s oven, both to leave behind slivers of flesh and glaze, corroborating Bedelia’s tale that all had been done here, and to procure lifelikeness, in case Freddie wanted to touch, or taste. Alana knelt in front of Bedelia. “The effects should last up to three hours.”

Bedelia’s eyes went to the oyster fork at her right. Her fingers twitched toward it. “You should go now.” Sedately, she took her eyes up to where Miriam stood. It was as if the irises tried to exit the globes and pulled on the rest of her face. “Miriam will stay.”

 

* * *

 

They had boarded the coast at the state line between New Hampshire and Maine. The creek where their boat was moored, devoid of tourist only thanks to the worsening winter, opened into a patch of trees that led to a small village, deprived of all movement at this early hour. Hannibal followed the road from afar, walking through fields and old meadows, his feet wet and cold from the snow. With the Will’s odor clinging to his clothes, seeping into his skin, he felt warmer.

At the outskirts of a larger town, he walked under the near human shapes of pylons. The electricity carried in their cables gave off a smell resembling javel or ozone. At the top of one of the metallic structures, a tall man wearing a large protection suit in neon green. He was tiny in the distance. Hannibal looked up at him from the ground, his hand cast over his forehead to shield the sun.

The worker’s truck was parked on the slope beside the road. The side read Abworth Energy in pale gray over a blue background and with two faded, jagged lines representing thunderbolts. After a quick look inside, Hannibal found the keys on the passenger seat.

The man had seen him at this point and struggled with his harness, waving frantically. The wind was sharp on the ground and must have been stronger 50 feet above. All Hannibal could hear was muffled yelling. He waved his hand once in salutation, only causing the man to move faster. But, no matter how hard he had tried, the worker was still 30 feet high in the pylon when Hannibal took his lunchbox and cell phone, placed them on the side of the road, tucked in a mound of snow, along with the car plate, and left with the truck.

 

* * *

 

The first news of the head found at Mapp’s apartment reached Jack in the greenhouse. He had bought one single orchid yesterday. It was beautiful, as lightning itself, white, with a bright red heart in the flower's mouth. He was tending to it, picking morsels of its ground that seemed mossy. He had begun to consider changing the whole patch of topsoil when the radio spoke of it.

Listening as intently as he could, he caught himself reaching for his phone. He balled his fist. This didn’t belong with him anymore. Soon the FBI would be only a distant memory, something his life and body had grown used to, and that it would grow used to not having. He had expected it to feel like a limb had been removed. For now, it was like losing a shadow. Sometimes, he would cast a look behind himself and search for something there.

But by the time he had brought the bag of potting mix up from the basement, his hands fidgeted on his hip. In the kitchen, he drank a glass of water and searched for the data he had kept on Robertas Lecter. His phone number was still there. The Bureau had asked him not to leave the country.

He dialed. The voice that answered had a thick Japanese accent. He asked if he could speak to Count Lecter and was told to hold.

“Mr. Crawford,” Robertas Lecter greeted.

“Count Lecter,” Jack said. “Did you happen to see the news?”

“Why?”

Jack pulled his gardening gloves back on. “You will receive calls from the FBI today. Tell them you’re fine and they’ll go away.”

There was a pause on the other side of the line. “No one ever really goes away. As you and I know.”

 

* * *

 

Her cell phone woke Clarice up. She had fallen asleep on her side and her legs hurt, the pain extending into her back and, she found out as she sat, her neck and shoulders, like wings about to spread. The darkened walls of the Chandel Square house were clearer now with the dawn coming. She had hardly ever seen the room in the morning’s bright sun: the absent furniture had left spots on the floor and walls, paler than the varnish and the paint, not unlike the pieces of a puzzle removed from their holds.

“Starling.”

“We have another head. All flesh, this time,” Zeller said.

Her eyes lost their focus. Her mind didn’t see the house anymore. It saw the long road that led to a field where a dead lamb was still sacrificed, day after day, swallowed into countless mouths, remade in her imagination. “Who is it?”

“Robertas Lecter.” He cleared his throat. “But it’s not him. He’s well and alive in New Jersey with a seized passport.”

Clarice had gotten to her feet. How fast could she get out of here? Forever, she meant. Run so far she could find order within the confines of her own mind. Some emptiness, the ironic clarity that her name held. She wondered if Ardell would join her there. He was always in step with her, at every turn in the spaces of her imagination, empty but found and preserved. “Are you testing it for Ardell Mapp?” she said.

Another longer moment. Zeller’s voice had lowered. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we are.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may have noticed I removed the updating information from the main summary. It's because school took a turn for the worst and I can't now possibly tell you for certain a date I'll be able to make updates on on a regular basis. 
> 
> Tl;dr: when I wrote the story (from ca. January to April), I was trying for a mix of a Fuller pastiche with a Harris pastiche, and, in line with Harris's writing, I wrote the 13 chapters (divided into 60ish parts for posting here) broken into POV sections - one for the Alana/Bedelia cabbale part, then another one for the Will/Hannibal "savage yearning" (thank you [The_Grynne](http://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Grynne)!) arc, etc. When I asked [b_minako](http://archiveofourown.org/users/b_minako/pseuds/b_minako) and [rav3nsta9](http://archiveofourown.org/users/effie_chan/pseuds/rav3nsta9) to beta the first parts of this for me, one of their suggestions was to break the big chapters into smaller ones and then to distribute the POV sections through these shorter parts. They were right: it's much better this way and allows the story's narrative to not struggle so much (I hope) with its atmospheric elements. But it also means editing to fit sections together in a way that makes sense, including rewriting some of them sometimes. 
> 
> And sadly, as of right now, I only have 30-40 minutes a day to do that, usually 5 minutes at a time, waiting for my class sitting on the bench in Leacock that no one ever sits on because one of its legs is uneven, or in between reading papers. The relatively good news is, I cannot have this go later than mid-October (because then, oh boy, will I be dying the death of the thousand razors) and I will most likely still post 2 or 3 parts at a time. 
> 
> Sorry for the loads of words. I admit I'm a brimming, smoking cup of stress at the moment. 
> 
> [D_Veleniet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_Veleniet) dear (and those of you who commented on the HBB fic as well): I read your nice thoughts and will answer shortly, Saturday, probably.


	44. 44.

The ring had left a thick depression in the skin of his finger. It disappeared somewhat among the swelling and the nudges of blood drawing petechiae like stardust on his knuckle. Will washed the skin in the sink, but all the blood was already gone. It was somewhere in Hannibal’s body, along with Will’s smell and the water and sweat from his neck, his chest. And all of this was going to Molly’s house.

It hurt him that he couldn’t trust himself. It was the same hurt that had always been there, only now it had bloomed in such a solid form that he could rest on it, rest against it, use it to walk through the void. Maybe he would float, right now, if he plunged in the water, held in the grasp of his pain like his blood was lighter than air.

He huffed quietly and bandaged his finger. This, or he would fall straight through the water, dive into the ground of the sea and melt his way to the bottom of the Earth. He folded Hannibal’s handkerchief in squares, the way Hannibal did it. Will wasn’t sure if he did it that way because he couldn’t bring himself to do it otherwise, or because he knew Hannibal would like it, finding signs of himself in Will. He placed it on his bunk bed, on the pillow. There was a sliver of blood in a lotus flower petal of the golden and blue paisley. Its red would fade into brown and go unnoticed.

Beside the GPS, the boat’s cockpit had a compass, for emergencies. Behind it was the radio they had never used and the modem, stacked in a fishnet bag against the wall. Will disconnected the radio from the antenna and turned on the modem.

The laptop computer came to life. In the cabin, the tiny windows’ curtains kept the daylight out. Today, they deepened the graying of the clouds and brought it inside.

At first, Will didn’t know what he was searching for. In the aftermath, it would be easier to understand it as a conjoining of forces, or maybe instinct. He thought he was running away from himself and, as it turned out, he had only vacated a spot that others preyed on. Or it may just have been the chaotic emptiness latching onto him.

His first thought was to search for Molly, as if, through the shimmering pixels, he would say something like a proper goodbye. He typed Molly Graham. Then, taken at the weight sinking down on his shoulder, he erased it. He typed Molly Foster. He erased it too, taken at the near-obscene cowardice of his own thinking. He searched for himself and Hannibal instead, trying to map out the new world that only lived in his chest for now.

The first news site told him the head of Robertas Lecter had been found. The second one had detailed pictures of it, released by the FBI, along with the statement that Robertas Lecter’s head was not constituted of the remains of Robertas Lecter. Throughout everything, Hannibal Lecter was held to be a suspect. The Bureau’s position, spoken through the mouth of the OIG, was that Hannibal Lecter was still presumed dead. There was no evidence to attest of his involvement.

But Will understood the sentiment.

It looked just like something the Ripper would do. There was an intricate, immediate resemblance, unspoken yet as clear as day.

Ignoring the thumping of blood in his fingers, the roughness inside his cheek, the pain that still needed to be dulled in his shoulder, he breathed out, as slowly as he could, eyes on the image. As his breathing deepened, things went colder around him.

The ship disappeared. He was floating above the ocean, suspended over the cliff. _He felt under his nails, in the creases of the skin in his fingers, the stitching of flesh together,_ to fabricate a head. The FBI’s hypothesis would be that it was a message. But messages involve an answer, a correspondence. Starling would know that, he thought.

 _He had known Hannibal Lecter a long time. Still, this knowledge could be called distance, even when it didn’t feel like that anymore. He didn’t want to harm Hannibal Lecter, nor be known as him. There was something else, something smaller, something more interesting._ Will felt it struggling at the back of his mind, where he couldn’t quite see. _He wanted attention, or what resembled it. It wasn’t about acknowledgment, it was much older than that, much… more personal. You don’t display the head of someone’s uncle if you don’t feel like you have privileged access._ Will mumbled it under his breath.

It was much more intimate than the crimes the Ripper had committed. It was meant for an audience of one.

Will opened his eyes. He reconnected the radio and left the cabin. The cold air of the outside helped him for a moment. His mind was muddy. It swung between Molly, with her blinded eyes, and Robertas Lecter’s head, its mouth open to swallow the world.

 

* * *

 

The needle was slipped out of his arm. There were still two attached to his collarbones.

Ardell tried to breathe in.

Billy chided him. “Up here.”

The older man was above him, so that Ardell had to tilt his head backward. His skin pulled against the restraints, vices, he had identified, like the ones holding the head of patients steady during cranial surgery. “I’m scared,” Ardell said. “Isn’t that what you want?”

“Partly.” A faint click above and behind him. Something Ardell couldn’t see. “Fear is a means to an end.”

There was no such thing as sleep anymore. Only the lack of fire in his bones and mind, and where his mind would become bone and shake. Yet Ardell began to feel tired. Another bag had just been added to the intravenous drip. “What’s the end?” he asked. “Surpassing Hannibal Lecter? In sadism, you better him.”

“No one ever witnessed Lecter’s sadism,” Billy said, slipping back in front of him. “We’re postulating it. We don’t know what it might have looked like.”

“And behaviorism tells us that pleasure makes motivation.”

Billy frowned at that, as if disappointed. Maybe Ardell’s mind had become crude, soft at the edges. He seemed to shake it and clasped both hands on his knees. “We’ll start.” 

“Start what?”

“The questions.” Billy reached over Ardell’s head. Some of his hair was plastered on his head. He pushed it back on his temple. “What is your favorite _chiaroscuro_ painting and why?”

Ardell blinked slowly. His mouth felt cold and dry. “Do you want an essay?”

The string in Billy that had apparently echoed in disappointment rang again. It gave a clearer sound. “I want an answer,” he said tightly. “And I want it to be true. This is a simple question. Call it a test, if you want.”

Ardell didn’t have to search himself. The response sat at the forefront of his mind, pushed there by waves of fear. “ _The Incredulity of Saint Thomas_.”

Billy’s tautness wasn’t leaving. “Common,” he commented. “Why?”

“There doesn’t have to be a reason.”

The older man’s lips thinned with a sigh. Something was scratching at the back of his mind, furiously, trying to get out. “Yes. There has to be,” he said.

In a rapid move, Billy reached forward. Ardell hadn’t seen the scalpel in his hand. It was matte steel, didn’t catch the light. He gasped as it moved to his neck, but the expected pain didn’t manifest. His whole body was numb, except for the cold that came from inside. Billy sat back in his chair, the scalpel in one hand and a sliver of flesh in the other.

“It’s Jesus,” Ardell panted, eyes on what appeared to be skin. His skin, from the neck. “He’s surprised. He looks at Thomas and he’s astonished that his finger would fit into the wound. Like he doesn’t believe he had a body at all either.” He squinted as Billy put the flesh down in a bowl, carefully laying it out at the bottom, where Ardell could see it. The disappointment was gone. He was gleeful now, much like he was when he rang Ardell’s doorbell. “Like he needed someone to touch it to believe himself.”

Billy was smiling now. Sheer joy, rotting happiness, a loud, rolling wave of pride. He took the glove off his right hand and touched a knuckle to Ardell’s nose, friendly and like he owned him. “Now we’re getting somewhere…”

Ardell reminded himself not to root for the captor. He had never rooted for anyone. But he was strapped to the chair, he had nowhere to go and nothing to do. There were two options, he knew: to fear, or to share.

 

* * *

 

It was afternoon when Hannibal reached his destination. On the side of the road he followed came a signpost. It sat above a mailbox and bore an address, the one he searched for, and the name Foster. Beyond the sign a long path stretched into the woods, covered in snow, but recently plowed. Hannibal left the truck a mile further down and left the road on foot to walk amid the trees.

The house wasn’t far, but dissimulated behind pines and birches, their branches covered in snow. His feet dug deep and found, under the white cover, a layer of mud, dead leaves, pine needles and strips of bark. 

It was not dissimilar to what he recalled of Will’s house in Wolf Trap.  Blank need rose in him, as strong as appetite, but without a precise object, to witness every part of Will’s life, even the ones conjured to avoid thinking of him. This was the black hole meant to draw Will’s mind away and Hannibal found it drew him just as well, splintering the atoms of him to open them to the void of this common country life.

A thin line of smoke came out of the house’s chimney, paler than the clouds above.

He went around the house, trying to find and follow Francis Dolarhyde's steps. Possibly here, where the openings underneath the porch had been closed with planks. Were there locked doors here at night? In this space protected by distance and secrecy alone?

A dog waited for him as he turned to hoist himself on the porch. It was one he had already met before in Wolf Trap. The last time Hannibal had seen it, it was twisting in the snow, in Randall Tier’s mechanical maul, struggling to escape. It looked onward at him, and got to its feet, uncertain whether it should bark or not.

Hannibal extended an arm, clothed in Will’s sweater and coat. The dog sniffed it tentatively, while another came behind Hannibal, spotted white and brown and taller. Once its sniffing was done, the first dog sat back down. It had calmed down and nosed Hannibal’s hands, peaceful, if not entirely fooled. Perhaps it didn’t entirely understand why Will and him weren’t the same, or why Hannibal smelled of Will in some parts and not in others.

He turned to the brown dog. He recognized it distantly. In prison he had often smelled her on Alana. Applesauce, if he recalled well. She wasn’t duped at all. There was a faint growl in her throat.

There was a faint warmth in Hannibal’s chest at the thought that Will could no longer be welcomed here. That he would be hunted by some of his pack. 

Above Hannibal’s head, on the porch, there was the distinct sound of a gun cocked. “Who are you?” Hannibal turned around. The boy held a hunting rifle with the mouth only three feet from Hannibal's head. He appeared older than eleven and he would be taller, slimmer, stronger than Will. Already an apt hunter, with a quiet step and a determined eye. With Will’s scent around him, spiraling up from the clothes, flooding his nose and mind, Hannibal hadn’t smelled the very same shampoo he’d smelled on Will on his first visit in prison.

When Hannibal said nothing, the boy asked again, his eye lined with the gun's aim, “Are you going to kill me?”

Applesauce’s growling intensified. “I haven’t decided yet,” Hannibal said.

 

* * *

 

_Alana had woken alone, earlier than she had planned. The bed beside her was empty. It was rare that they came to her house. She was usually the one sleeping in a bed not her own, with a friend who was becoming a lover in such a flagrant way she wondered when had Hannibal only been a friend._

_Going downstairs, she wrapped a peach silk robe around herself. Her hair fell into an elongated crown on her shoulders. She found Hannibal in the living room, sitting in one of the couches. He had started a fire in her fireplace and seemed deep in thought. Coming closer, she saw that Applesauce sat with him, on the couch where she wasn’t allowed to be._

_Hannibal observed the dog. “She reminds me of Will too,” Alana said from the doorway where she stood._

_“Why would she?”_

_“It’s something I did for him,” she said. She moved to sit beside him, between him and Applesauce. “It’s what I thought when I found her. That it was Will would do.”_

_“That it was something good he would do. That that goodness has to continue existing.”_

_Alana nodded._

_Hannibal pulled her slowly to him, first gathering a fistful of her robe in his hand, then nuzzling into her neck. All the while, Applesauce wasn’t looking at them, but at the fire, quiet or sleepy. “We should go back to bed. It’s too early,” Hannibal said into Alana’s hair._


End file.
